Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

And what amazes me as I hit the motorway is not the fact that everyone loses someone, but that everyone loves someone. It seems like such a massive waste of energy -- and we all do it, all the people beetling along between the white lines, merging, converging, overtaking. We each love someone, even though they will die. And we keep loving them, even when they are not there to love any more. And there is no logic or use to any of this, that I can see.

Sometimes you forgive people simply becuase you still want them in your life.

I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake--especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all.

You can't love your mother or father if you don't also have the capacity to grieve their deaths and, perhaps even more so, grieve parts of their lives.

Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.

I know who you are in your heart,' Andres said. 'That's all that matters.' And that was it. That was the moment. Now I knew how I would feel if I ever lost him. That was how you knew love. My mother had told me that. All you had to do was imagine your life without the other person, and if the thought alone made you shiver, then you knew.

Love hurts. There is nothing as painful as heartbreak. But in order to learn to love again you must learn to trust again.

The big relationships you make in your life are with those that you love and if things do go wrong then it's a source of great pain and that lasts.

The new record started out being about loss, but it's morphed into being about how relationships go on even though one person is not in a body anymore.

I had to learn compassion. Had to learn what it felt like to hate, and to forgive and to love and be loved. And to lose people close to me. Had to feel deep loneliness and sorrow. And then I could write.

My first heartbreak was extreme. I went to Australia for 10 months when I was at school and told the girl I was madly in love with not to come out to see me - and of course, when I came back, she met me at the airport to tell me she'd met someone else.

There's been times when I've had heartbreaking moments and I'm like, 'I can't believe you said that,' or 'I can't believe you did that'. And it hurts, it still hurts, and it'll always hurt, but I've never had somebody that I truly cared about just walk out on me, whether it was a boyfriend, or an aunt, mom or dad.

Small things such as this have saved me: how much I love my mother — even after all these years. How powerfully I carry her within me. My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger. So is yours. You are not grieving your son’s death because his death was ugly and unfair. You’re grieving it because you loved him truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of his death.

But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?

Don't be ashamed to weep; 'tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.

Being in love, you know... it's not like having a canary, in a cage. When you lose one sweetheart, you can't just go out and get another to replace her.

When somebody leaves this plane—or, if you like, goes into another room—those left behind sometimes try and stop loving—but this is a mistake, because even if you have loved only once in your life, you’re ruined.

Could you really love someone who was capable of falling in love with somebody else?

People die, I think, but your relationship with them doesn't. It continues and is ever-changing.

He was my best friend. I would always love him, and it would never, ever be enough.

I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more.

If you love people, you take them on trust.

But I'll tell you something else, too. Something I've learned, the hard way. I guess"—Gram laughed a little—"I'm the kind of person who has to learn things the hard way. You've got to hold on. Hold on to people. They can get away from you. It's not always going to be fun, but if you don't—hold on—then you lose them.

We don't know how much we are capable of loving until the people we love are being taken away, until a beautiful story is ending.

It's hard because people think they have something to lose and the truth is they have everything to gain in trying to love somebody.