Quotes from Pigs in Heaven

“But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“Last time I talked to her she didn't sound like herself. She's depressed. It's awful what happens when people run out of money. They start thinking they're no good.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“No matter what kind of night you're having, morning always wins.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“The thing is, it's my own fault. I just can't put up with a person that won't go out of his way for me. And that's what a man is. Somebody that won't go out of his way for you. I bet it says that in the dictionary.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“Anybody can get worked up, if they have the intention. It's peacefulness that is hard to come by on purpose.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“If men only knew, modesty makes women fall in love faster than all the cock-a-doodling in the world.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“Do you think its possible to live without wanting to put your name on your paintings? To belong to a group so securely you don't need to rise above it?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“Sympathizing over the behavior of men is the baking soda of women's friendships, it seems,the thing that makes them bubble and rise.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they're not self-sufficient.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“She has changed in this way that motherhood changes you, so that you forget you ever had time for small things like despising the color pink.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“It's monstrous, what one person will do to another.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“A woman knows she can walk away from a pot to tend something else and the pot will go on boiling; if she couldn't, this world would end at once.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“The obstinate practicality of old women pierces and fortifies these families like the steel rods buried in walls of powdery concrete.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“She understands all at once, with a small shock, exactly what it is she always needed to tell Harland: being there in person is not the same as watching. You might see things better on television, but you'll never know if you were alive or dead while you watched.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“Alice hands Annawake a handkerchief. Young people never carry them, she's noticed. They haven't yet learned that heartbreak can catch up to you on any given day.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“I’m always looking at the dialectic between the truth we believe exists outside ourselves and the truth we invent for ourselves.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“She married him two years ago for love, or so she thought, and he's a good enough man but a devotee of household silence. His idea of marriage is to spray WD-40 on anything that squeaks. ... The quiet only subsides when Harland sleeps and his tonsils make up for lost time. ”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“I was so depressed I stopped using hair spray for three weeks.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“You talk about her as if she is the Notre Dame Cathedral!" "She is. And the Statue of Liberty and Abbey Road and the best burrito of your life. Didn't you know?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“The clock gulps softly, eating second whole while she waits...”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“I've just fallen on some bad luck and landed jelly side down.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“They rock against each other, holding on, and the birds in the forest raise their voices to drown out the secret of creation.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“She climbs down and pours half an inch of Jim Beam into a Bengals mug that came free with a tank of gas. Alice would just as soon get her teeth cleaned as watch the Bengals. That's the price of staying around when your heart's not in it, she thinks. You get to be cheerleader for a sport you never chose.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“Let's go take a walk down to the blue hole. You need to look at some water.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“She told him television was a bad influence. Probably she was right. Like those white birds he's been seeing outside the window, it flashes its wings and promises whatever you want, even before you knew you wanted it.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“Cash misses his wife with a blank pain in his chest, and he misses his sisters and cousins, who have known him since he was a strong, good-looking boy. Everyone back there remembers, or if they are too young, they've been told. The old ones get to hang on the sweet, perfect past. Cash was the best at climbing trees; his sister Letty won the story bees. The woman who married Letty's husband's brother, a beauty named Sugar, was spotted one time drinking a root beer and had her picture in LIFE magazine. They all know. Now she has thin hair and a humped back but she's still Sugar, she gets to walk around Heaven, Oklahoma, with everybody thinking she's pretty and special. which she is. That's the trouble with moving away from family, he realizes. You lose your youth entirely, you have only the small tired baggage that is carried within the body.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“The backs of his hands remind him of paper burning in the fireplace, the moment the taut membrane goes slack into a thousand wrinkles, just before it withers to ash and air.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“Then again, do you have to be told every single thing about the world before you know it?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

“WOMEN ON THEIR OWN RUN in Alice’s family. This dawns on her with the unkindness of a heart attack and she sits up in bed to get a closer look at her thoughts, which have collected above her in the dark.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven

About the author

Popular quotes

“My own eyes were wide open, waiting to see all the ways the world would change now that we had crossed through, past the limit of civilization and into the dark land, where whites keep their rule by savagery and fear. I waited for the sky to darken, for the crows that would wheel across the clouds. But it was the same winding road, the same spreading green countryside, the same taffy-blue sky. Same on either side of the Fence.”
― Ben H. Winters, quote from Underground Airlines

“Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it. ”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from الحرب والسلم [War and Peace]

“...de vermos qualquer coisa de sólido em vez deste vazio pavoroso neste espaço cuja extensão atroz nunca ousámos imaginar enquanto vivíamos no nosso buraco, porque é como um poço sem fundo; debruçamo-nos cada vez mais, a tal ponto que acabamos por cair, e uma vez caídos, continuamos a cair toda a vida sem termos outra coisa para viver além dessa queda sem fim, até ao dia em que morremos em plena queda sem jamais chegarmos a atingir fundo algum, porque somos aniquilados durante a nossa própria queda e devorados pelo vazio depois de termos desesperadamente tentando dar-lhes sentido esforçando-nos para chegar ao fundo”
― Stig Dagerman, quote from De dömdas ö

“Recent research has indicated that the average individual listens for only seventeen seconds before interrupting and interjecting his own ideas.”
― Gary Chapman, quote from The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't be working."
"Of course you should. I'm alright."
"Even F.I.N.E.?"
She laughed. "Especially that."
Fucked-up. Insecure. Neurotic. Egotistical.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.