Barbara Kingsolver

When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and you become another person for the duration. ”

You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm. ”

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. ”

In the day-to-day, farm work is stress relief for me. At the end of the day, I love having this other career - my anti-job - that keeps me in shape and gives me control over a vegetal domain. ”

I do my best work if I think about what it is I have to offer. ”

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up. ”

I used to think religion was just more of the same thing. Dump responsibility on the big guy. Now I see an importance in that. It's a relief to accept that not everything is under your control. ”