I was trained in classical piano, but it kind of dawned on me that classical pianists compete for six job openings a year, and the rest of us get to play ‘Blue Moon’ in a hotel lobby. Barbara Kingsolver Read Quote
I don’t bring expectations to any of my books. I don’t tell people what to do. I want to invite them in. Barbara Kingsolver Read Quote
It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you’ll be labeled a political writer. Barbara Kingsolver Read Quote
I live in southern Appalachia, so I’m surrounded by people who work very hard for barely a living wage. It’s particularly painful that people are working the farms their parents and grandparents worked but aren’t living nearly as well. Barbara Kingsolver Read Quote
What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity. Barbara Kingsolver Read Quote
There’s always a part of your nation’s history that you haven’t been told that… has a powerful impact on how you yourself may behave and may believe. Barbara Kingsolver Read Quote
Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you’ll behave to other people. Barbara Kingsolver Read Quote
Every time I write a new novel about something sombre and sobering and terrible I think, ‘oh Lord, they’re not going to want to go here’. But they do. Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that’s brave. Barbara Kingsolver Read Quote
