Quotes from The Lacuna

“The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“...nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down." - Mrs. Brown”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“You force people to stop asking questions, and before you know it they have auctioned off the question mark, or sold it for scrap. No boldness. No good ideas for fixing what's broken in the land. Because if you happen to mention it's broken, you are automatically disqualified.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“The past is all we know of the future.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“War so conspicuously benefits rich men and kills the poor ones.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“He needs to go rub his soul against life.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don't know.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Everyone should get dirt on his hands each day. Doctors, intellectuals. Politicians, most of all. How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man, if we don't respect his work?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“There are some who'd hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think's been too lucky.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Soli, let me tell you. The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade. I'm one of those. We don't bend anything.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Bitter words normally evaporate with the moisture of breath, after a quarrel. In order to become permanent, they require transcribers, reporters, complicit black hearts.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“It's a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he's entitled to joy rather than submission?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“You know reviewers, they are the wind in their own sails. ”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“But newspapers have a duty to truth,' Van said.
Lev clucked his tongue. 'They tell the truth only as the exception. Zola wrote that the mendacity of the press could be divided into two groups: the yellow press lies every day without hesitating. But others, like the Times, speak the truth on all inconsequential occasions, so they can deceive the public with the requisite authority when it becomes necessary.'
Van got up from his chair to gather the cast-off newspapers. Lev took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. 'I don't mean to offend the journalists; they aren't any different from other people. They're merely the megaphones of the other people.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what's not in it.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Because nothing wondrous can come in this world unless it rests on the shoulders of kindness.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“An imperfectly remembered life is a useless treachery. Every day, more fragments of the past roll around heavily in the chambers of an empty brain, shedding bits of color, a sentence or a fragrance, something that changes and then disappears. It drops like a stone to the bottom of the cave.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Mother could go for one year without food, but not one day without her lip sticks.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“A novel! Why do you say this won't liberate anyone? Where does any man go to be free, whether he is poor or rich or even in prison? To Dostoyevsky! To Gogol!”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“No reporter worth his buttons will let the facts intrude on a good story. ”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

About the author

Popular quotes

“The ludicrous fever of toys struggling skyward, the sky itself more and more remote, the wind tearing the awning of cloud to tatters, pale limitless blue and green recessions laced with strands of scud, the light failing—once she would have noticed these things.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Murphy

“Are you okay? You seem ...soggy."
"Soggy?"
"Yes." Heather nodded. "Like you're a depressed spaghetti noodle or something.”
― Chelsea Fine, quote from Anew

“Six express tracks and twelve locals pass through Palimpsest. The six Greater Lines are: Stylus, Sgraffito, Decretal, Foolscap, Bookhand, and Missal. Collectively, in the prayers of those gathered prostrate in the brass turnstiles of its hidden, voluptuous shrines, these are referred to as the Marginalia Line. They do not run on time: rather, the commuters of Palimpsest have learned their habits, the times of day and night when they prefer to eat and drink, their mating seasons, their gathering places. In days of old, great safaris were held to catch the great trains in their inexorable passage from place to place, and women grappled with them with hooks and tridents in order to arrive punctually at a desk in the depth, of the city.

As if to impress a distracted parent on their birthday, the folk of Palimpsest built great edifices where the trains liked to congregate to drink oil from the earth and exchange gossip. They laid black track along the carriages’ migratory patterns. Trains are creatures of routine, though they are also peevish and curmudgeonly. Thus the transit system of Palimpsest was raised up around the huffing behemoths that traversed its heart, and the trains have not yet expressed displeasure.

To ride them is still an exercise in hunterly passion and exactitude, for they are unpredictable, and must be observed for many weeks before patterns can be discerned. The sport of commuting is attempted by only the bravest and the wildest of Palimpsest. Many have achieved such a level of aptitude that they are able to catch a train more mornings than they do not.

The wise arrive early with a neat coil of hooked rope at their waist, so that if a train is in a very great hurry, they may catch it still, and ride behind on the pauper’s terrace with the rest of those who were not favored, or fast enough, or precise in their calculations. Woe betide them in the infrequent mating seasons! No train may be asked to make its regular stops when she is in heat! A man was once caught on board when an express caught the scent of a local. The poor banker was released to a platform only eight months later, when the two white leviathans had relinquished each other with regret and tears.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, quote from Palimpsest

“Desperate times call for desperate measures" is an aphorism which here means "sometimes you need to change your facial expression in order to create a workable disguise." The quoting of an aphorism, such as "It takes a village to raise a child," "No news is good news," and "Love conquers all," rarely indicates that something helpful is about to happen, which is why we provide our volunteers with a disguise kit in addition to helpful phrases of advice.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography

“Nick did not want to go in there now. He felt a reaction against deep wading with the water deepening up under his armpits, to hook big trout in places impossible to land them. In the swamp the banks were bare, the big cedars came together overhead, the sun did not come through, except in patches; in the fast deep water, in the half light, the fishing would be tragic. In the swamp fishing was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it. He did not want to go down the stream any farther today. He”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Nick Adams Stories

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.