Barbara Kingsolver

Southern Appalachians have been ridiculed since the country began. In fiction, they're usually depicted in a cartoonish manner. The region is poor, and very suspicious of outsiders, so there's a sort of 'us versus them' situation. They're easy to poke fun at. ”

I grew up aware of all the people I depended on and who depended on me. ”

I'm not pretending to be ingenuous; I know what I'm doing. ”

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. ”

I've always seen the world through the eyes of a scientist. I love the predictable outcomes that science gives us, the control over the world that that can render. ”

I think the most interesting parts of human experience might be the sparks that come from that sort of chipping flint of cultures rubbing against each other. And living on the border between Mexico and the U.S. for so many years gave me a lot of insight into that. ”

The important thing isn't the house. It's the ability to make it. You carry that in your brains and in your hands, wherever you go... It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else. ”

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. ”

We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts. ”

Small change, small wonders - these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life. ”