Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

People were so naive about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction---and defense.

Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.

There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them.

Because of his capacity for abstract communications and language and his ability to enter in imagination into the lives of others, man is able to build organizations of a size and complexity far beyond those of the lower animals.

If we compare a severely defective human infant with a nonhuman animal, a dog or a pig, for example, we will often find the nonhuman to have superior capacities, both actual and potential, for rationality, self-consciousness, communication and anything else that can plausibly be considered morally significant.

A flower is a plant's way of making love.

pretense is the oil that lubricates society.

Only animals have to satisfy instincts! Surely your aims are somewhat higher than theirs! Than monkeys! Pigs!

..."Good, because I need your help." "Help is my middle name." I was pretty sure she'd already told me bad was her middle name, but I kept my opinion to myself.

I tell a lot of interesting stories and talk about my background and have a lot of fun. We have a lot of pictures. They actually came to my house and shot me painting my toenails and doing dishes. But I never really do the dishes.

Men who think deeply appear to be comedians in their dealings with others because they always have to feign superficiality in order to be understood.

You've got to struggle against the pollution of intelligence in order to become an animal with very sharp instincts - a sort of intuitive medium - so that to photograph becomes a magical act, and slowly other more suggestive images begin to appear behind the visible image, for which the photographer cannot be held responsible.

If a dog happens to catch a rabbit or another animal, it can very easily remove the hide. If a cat catches a squirrel, they have no trouble with that. But if a person does that, they will work all day and all night to get the skin off of an animal, because they don't have long canine teeth anymore.

When a man asks your advice, he usually tells you just how he expects you to decide.

Writing is thinking in slow motion.

In one sense what may pass between the pope and myself may be trivialities. In another sense the fact of talking trivialities is itself a portent of great significance. But the pleasantries which we exchange may, as one church leader said, be pleasantries about profundities.

We slander the hyena; man is the fiercest and cruelest animal.

To say that there is a soul in stones simply in order to account for their production is unsatisfactory: for their production is not like the reproduction of living plants, and of animals which have senses. For all these we see reproducing their own species from their own seeds; and a stone does not do this at all. We never see stones reproduced from stones; ... because a stone seems to have no reproductive power at all.

Animals give me more pleasure through the viewfinder of a camera than they ever did in the crosshairs of a gunsight. And after I've finished "shooting," my unharmed victims are still around for others to enjoy. I have developed a deep respect for animals. I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than those of humans.

But man is freer than all the animals, on account of his free-will, with which he is endowed above all other animals.

If you tell Congress everything about the world situation, they get hysterical. If you tell them nothing, they go fishing.

Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? ... or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. ... Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and he wasn't mad. They know the secrets of the sea, they don't bark.

Photography is a transformation, not a reproduction.

Analogue. A part or organ in one animal which has the same function as another part or organ in a different animal.

Seeing me before him, / The adversary attacks, / But by that time / I am already standing / Safely behind him.