top of page
"She is too absorbed in the difficulties of being seventeen to want to hear the confusions of forty-four."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Youth quotes

"I am life,' the girl said.'What?' he said, startled.'To you, I am life. What are you, thirty-eight? Forty? What have you learned? Have you done anything? Look at me, look. I'm life and when you're done with me, some of it rubs off on you. You don't feel so old now, do you? With me here in the squib beside you.'Nick said, 'I'm thirty-four and I don't feel old. As a matter of fact, sitting here with you makes me feel older, not younger. Nothing is rubbing off.''It will,' she said."

"You've got a great chance in college to do all sorts of terrible irresponsible things, and you should totally do them. I mean, make huge mistakes. This is the time in your life if you screw up, it's okay because you can bounce back from it."

"You cannot afford to gamble your youth only for fun."

"What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts."

"The feverish excitement of twenty had been something very noble, very beautiful, but it had not been love."
Explore more quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

"When something extraordinary shows up in your life in the middle of the night, you give it a name and make it the best home you can."

"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?"

"Our holiday food splurge was a small crate of tangerines, which we found ridiculously thrilling after an eight-month abstinence from citrus.... Lily hugged each one to her chest before undressing it as gently as a doll. Watching her do that as she sat cross-legged on the floor one morning in pink pajamas, with bliss lighting her cheeks, I thought: Lucky is the world, to receive this grateful child. Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing."

"There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physical manifestation of unbearable grief."

"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."

"In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves."

"Humans are in love with the idea of our persisting,' he said. 'We fetishize it, really. Our retirement funds, our genealogies. Our so-called ideas for the ages."
bottom of page