Unsheltered Quotes

“The girl was compulsively honest. In earlier years, Willa’s every attempt to teach her the artful evasion known as “tact” would get shot down with “Mom, that’s lying!” And Tig remained the child who announced when opening gifts at birthday parties, “Thanks, Grandma, I have one of these already and I don’t really like it.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“One percent of the brotherhood has their hands on most of the bread. They own the country, their god is the free market, and most people are so unhorrified they won’t even question the system. If it makes a profit, that’s the definition of good. If it grows, you have to stand back and let it. The free market has exactly the same morality as a cancer cell.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“Putana thalassa pou se gamoun ta psaria.” Meaning, “whore ocean where all the fish fuck each other.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“Autumn darkness had already blinded the dining room windows, an effect that dispirited him, no matter how many autumns he lived or how predictably the light receded.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“No one. I’m a pawn in this game. You’re always first to say how unimportant I am. But at least I will be the pawn who tells the truth.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“As to the career of avoiding making enemies. You can’t dig any burrow deep enough. Might as well stand and look them in the eye.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future world depends. —WALLACE STEVENS, “The Well Dressed Man with a Beard”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“capitalism, with its need for endless growth, is no longer viable? That we, the middle class, have to learn not to want so much?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“So much of life with infirmity came down to dignity and will.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“Willa wondered how many tuition dollars they’d invested in this conversation, and whether she could get a refund; she wished they would all shut up and eat.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“I know. It feels like the end of the world when you can’t have the things you always wanted. But it’s not the end of the world. There’s some other place to go.” “Sorry to tell you, but that’s a very old chestnut. My mother used to say when God slams a door on you, he opens a window.” Tig gave this two seconds of respectful consideration before rejecting it. “No, that’s not the same. I’m saying when God slams a door on you it’s probably a shitstorm. You’re going to end up in rubble. But it’s okay because without all that crap overhead, you’re standing in the daylight.” “Without a roof over your head, it kind of feels like you might die.” “Yeah, but you might not. For sure you won’t find your way out of the mess if you keep picking up bricks and stuffing them in your pockets. What you have to do is look for blue sky.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“If it came to pass that Thatcher should shake hands with President Grant, as Polly predicted, he would still be a man who viewed life from the bottom of the ditch, not the top.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“Even this far inland, New Jersey was still recovering from Hurricane Sandy, which in its time, a few years back, had been called the storm of the century. How foolish it seemed now to label anything “of the century.” This one was still a teenager with an anger-management problem and a long future ahead.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“How had she not seen all this? Willa was the one who raised her anxiety shield against every family medical checkup or late-night ring of the phone, expecting the worst so life couldn’t blindside them.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“When men fear the loss of what they know, they will follow any tyrant who promises to restore the old order.” “If that is our nature, then nature is madness. These are more dangerous times than we ever have”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“How dire was the descent of a man’s life, Thatcher mused, that he should now be stricken with spider jealousy.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“How foolish it seemed now to label anything “of the century.” This one was still a teenager with an anger-management problem and a long future ahead.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“A wife had greater wants, naturally, and could do nothing to help her own situation.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“Truth is objective. A man should be respected for telling it, not threatened.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“But it was no exaggeration, he’d witnessed this very thing in a market square in Boston: the crude effigy dangling from a noose, the monkey’s tail pinned to the stuffed trousers, the murderous crowd chanting Lock him up!”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“If that is our nature, then nature is madness. These are more dangerous times than we ever have known.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“it had been her mother who put Willa back together. When someone mattered like that, you didn’t lose her at death. You lost her as you kept living.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“Willa’s lifelong service to the duty of proper order now seemed like an idiot’s game.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“I’m saying when God slams a door on you it’s probably a shitstorm. You’re going to end up in rubble. But it’s okay because without all that crap overhead, you’re standing in the daylight.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“Scientific laws are not the property of a man. They exist outside of us.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“times than we ever have known.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“We try to reason with one another, but only manage to tear ourselves apart.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“Every education brings a point of reckoning, and this was his: seeing the world divided in two camps, the investigators and the sweeteners”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“At his last checkup the pediatrician had observed the howling red face and trembling limbs, and said that infants process grief as trauma. Then suggested they try a different formula.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“How are people so irrational?” he asked, but he knew. Even the abolitionists had no wish to be placed inside creation, subject to its laws. They wished to rule over it from the head of God’s table.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered