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"And here is the shocking plot twist: as farmers produced those extra calories, the food industry figured out how to get them into the bodies of people who didn't really want to eat 700 more calories a day."
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"To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set the foundations? An answer to this question must be found if one is to produce anything vital and hence lasting. All this disturbs me so much that I no longer like to be spoken to about it."

"A selfie has more face and fewer feelings."

"Air travel reminds us who we are. It's the means by which we recognize ourselves as modern. The process removes us from the world and sets us apart from each other. We wander in the ambient noise, checking one more time for the flight coupon, the boarding pass, the visa. The process convinces us that at any moment we may have to submit to the force that is implied in all this, the unknown authority behind it, behind the categories, the languages we don't understand. This vast terminal has been erected to examine souls."

"These days we have Smartphones, Smartcars, Smartboards, Smarteverything, but consider this: if technology is getting smarter, does that mean humans are getting dumber?"

"For millions of years, man spoke only to what he could see. Suddenly, in just one decade, 'seeing' and 'speaking' have been separated. We think we're used to it, yet we don't realize the immense impact it's had on our reflexes. Our bodies are simply not used to it. Frankly, the result is that, when we talk on the telephone, we enter a state that is similar to certain magical trances; we can discover other things about ourselves."

"It struck him that the true characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness."
Explore more quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

"Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember."

"It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer."

"You can't replace people you love with other people. But you can trust that you're not going to run out of people to love."

"As a dinner guest I gratefully eat just about anything that's set before me, because graciousness among friends is dearer to me than any other agenda."

"I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved."

"That would be Axelroot all over, to turn up with an extra wife or two claiming that's how they do it here. Maybe he's been in Africa so long he's forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it's called Monotony."

"I looked hard out the window and understood suddenly that what I saw was full of color. A watercolor wash of summer light lay on the Catalina Mountains. The end of a depression is that clear: it's as if you have been living underwater, but never realized it until you came up for air."

"Forgive me, O Heavenly Father, according to the multitude of Thy mercies. I have lusted in my heart to break a man's skull and scatter the stench of his brains across several people's back yards."

"They said it was to be a revolutionary house, free of class struggle, no servants' rooms because they didn't believe in laundry maids or cooks.Nobody does, really. Why should they? Only in having clean clothes, clean floors, and enchiladas tapatias."
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