“Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“If you never stepped on anybody's toes, you never been for a walk.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“I lost a child," she said, meeting Lusa's eyes directly. "I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“Now I'm starting to think he wasn't supposed to be my whole life, he was just this doorway to me. ”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“Thanks for this day, for all birds safe in their nests, for whatever this is, for life.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he is not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“A breeze shook rain out of new leaves onto their hair, but in their pursuit of eternity they never noticed the chill.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“The loudest sound on earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“I've always found people love you best if you can laugh at your own foolish misfortunes and keep mum about everyone else's”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“she's never forgotten, either, how a mystery caught in the hand could lose its grace”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“A bird in the hand loses its mystery in no time flat.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“Feminine' was a test like some witch trial she was preordained to fail.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“Her body moved with the frankness that comes from solitary habits. But solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen. All secrets are witnessed.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“His scent burst onto her brain like a rain of lights, causing her to know him perfectly. This is how moths speak to each other. The wrong words are impossible when there are no words.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“Every family's its own trip to China.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“Lusa turned to Crys, her eyes shining. "That was a luna."
Crys shrugged. "So?"
"So? So what? You want it should sing, too?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“How would you even begin to make a hush puppy, what in the world was in one? Nothing to do with a puppy, surely. Garnett had long known, though he didn’t much like to admit it, that God’s world and the better part of daily life were full of mysteries known only to women.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“From what he could see she had the legs of a much younger woman. Certainly not what he would have expected in the way of Unitarian legs.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“I will never understand it,” she said. “We’re the top of our food chain, so you’d think we’d relate to those guys the best. Seems like we’d be trying to talk them into trade agreements.” Eddie laughed at that. “So you’re telling me that as a kid, you were rooting for the wolf to eat the Riding Hood babe?” “My last name was Wolfe. I took it all kind of personally.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“The spiraling flights of moths appear haphazard only because of the mechanisms of olfactory tracking are so different from our own. Using binocular vision, we judge the location of an object by comparing the images from two eyes and tracking directly toward the stimulus. But for species relying on the sense of smell, the organism compares points in space, moves in the direction of the greater concentration, then compares two more points successively, moving in zigzags toward the source. Using olfactory navigation the moth detects currents of scent in the air and, by small increments, discovers how to move upstream.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“You knew me well enough to find me here,' she said.
And his scent burst onto her brain like a rain of lights, and his voice reached across the distance without words: 'I've always known you that well.'
He wrapped her in his softness, touched her face with the movement of trees and the odor of wild water over stones, dissolving her need in the confidence of his embrace.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“Don’t you miss it, any of it?'
…
'I couldn’t say.' She thought about it. 'Not cars or electric lights, not movies. Books I can get if I ask. But walking around in a library, putting my hands on books I never knew about, that I miss. Any thing else, I don’t know.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“Oh, man, don’t get me started on the subject of childhood brainwash. I hate that. Every fairy story, every Disney movie, every plot with animals in it, the bad guy is always the top carnivore. Wolf, grizzly, anaconda, Tyrannosaurus rex.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“And you came over to make sure I was all right, is that what you're telling me? You came over here with your shotgun to protect me from my scarecrow?"
"I had to," Garnett said, spreading his hands, throwing himself on her mercy. "I didn't care for the way Buddy was looking at you in your short pants.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“She never wore a watch, and for this she didn't need one.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“was after they discovered the world was round. I’m not scared of big words.” “I didn’t say you were.” “You did, too! ‘I realize you’re no scientist, Miss Rawley,”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“she considered a language that could carry nothing but love and simple truth.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Prodigal Summer
“Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are. And the more you wage war.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, quote from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“Find one thing. One thing that's beautiful. Anything. Anything that shows you you're not one of them."
His eyes were back on me studying my face silently. Panic raced through me. It wasn't working. I couldn't do this. We were going to have to get out of here, regardless of whatever state he was in. I knew he'd leave, too. If i had learned anything, it was that Dimitri's warrior instincts were still working. If I said danger was coming, he would respond instantly, no matter the self-torment he felt. I didn't want him to leave in despair. I wanted him to leave here one step closer to being the man I knew he could be. I wanted him to have one less nightmare.
It was beyond my abilities, though. I was no therapist. I was about to tell him we had to get out of there, about to make his soldier reflexes kick in, when he suddenly spoke. His voice was barley a whisper. "Your hair."
"What?" for a second, I wondered if it was on fire or somthing. I touched a stray lock. No, nothing was wrong exept that it was a mess. I'd bound it up for battle to prevent the strgoi from using it as a handhold, like Angeline had. Much of it had come undone in the struggle, though.
"Your hair," repeated Dimitri. His eyes were wide, almost awestruck. "your hair is beautiful.”
― Richelle Mead, quote from Last Sacrifice
“I do all of these things," Daniel said, leaning into her so that their foreheads touched, "because you're my love, Lucinda. For me, you're all there is.”
― Lauren Kate, quote from Fallen
“Maybe so,” he said, “but whatever little chance of safety there is, I want her to have it.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from His Dark Materials
“He [Rabbi Menasha Levaartov] was one of those men who, even in the years of peace, would have advised his congregation that while God may well be honored by the inflexibility of the pious, he might also be honored by the flexibility of the sensible.”
― Thomas Keneally, quote from Schindler's List
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