Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

I did spend a lot of time as a child very confused about whether I had a devil in me, or whether I was in a state of grace. I mean, these ideas are so potent to anybody with half an imagination.

I was enrolled in divinity school and thought I was going to become a minister - I'm Episcopalian - but I was disavowed of that notion pretty quickly while working at the hospital. I found myself really unfulfilled by the answers that are traditionally offered to questions of why some people suffer and why others suffer so little.

I read the book of Job last night, I don't think God comes out well in it.

I'm a religious, spiritual person, but if there is good in the world, there must be evil, too.

The most violent expression of God's wrath and justice is seen in the Cross. If ever a person had room to complain for injustice, it was Jesus. He was the only innocent man ever to be punished by God. If we stagger at the wrath of God, let us stagger at the Cross. Here is where our astonishment should be focused.

I rarely speak about God. To God yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But open discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree.

Born of Black and White, Eaten with worms, I'm a Saint, a Sinner, a Siren of the Word, The Circle knows me, the rest just wanna trip on Grace Juice, Baby Showdown at midnight

In the desert, an old monk had once advised a traveler, the voices of God and the Devil are scarcely distinguishable.

Evil is a point of view ... God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately ... for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves. God kills indiscriminately and so shall we. For no creatures under God are as we are none so like him as ourselves.

You said 'God is cruel' the way a person who's lived his whole life on Tahiti might say 'Snow is cold'. You knew, but you didn't understand." He stepped close to David and put his palms on the boy's cold cheeks. "Do you know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel?

It seems to me that one of the most interesting things about God as a concept, if you decide to believe in God, is that God's ways are unknowable. And God obviously, look at the world around you, does or is responsible for some terrible, terrible, awful things. A young girl kidnapped and kept in the darkness and sexually abused. The deaths of six million Jews. A mudslide that buries a village. All of these things. If God is doing the good stuff, he's got to be doing that stuff too.

If God is God He is not good, if God is good He is not God; take the even, take the odd.

I called out to God, but the devil keeps answering.

I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered — now I have only one doubt left — which of the twain was God?

God's love for his people is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice.

I did a lot of strange things. But I am a bad Catholic that's for sure. Although I think it's difficult to believe in evil.

In the very corner of my soul there is an altar to a different god.

and I try to draw the line but it ends up running down the middle of me most of the time.

Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains; they made him feel nearer to the God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented.

It might be the doing of Satan, in whom Aaron anxiously believed with all of his being except, perhaps, his mind.

Christ is God or He is the world's greatest liar and imposter.

That which lives on reason lives against the spirit.

... he felt himself to be one of them, who can live neither in the world nor out of it. They are a kind of sick people, whose desire for God makes them unsatisfactory citizens of an ordinary life, but whose strength or temperament fails them to surrender the world completely; and present-day society, with its hurried pace and its mechanical and technical structure, offers no home to these unhappy souls.

The truth of the matter is, Satan and God may want the exact same event to take place - but for different reasons. Satan's motive in Jesus' crucifixion was rebellion; God's motive was love and mercy. Satan was a secondary cause behind the Crucifixion, but it was God who ultimately wanted it, willed it, and allowed Satan to carry it out. And the same holds true for disease.

our quarrels with the world are like our quarrels with God: no matter how right we are, we are wrong.