Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise.

By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.

Writing about craft has forced me to think more about my own writing technique, and to break down my process in ways that have been enormously helpful to me.

To be wise use three languages: think well, feel well and do well. And to be wise allow yourselves to be surprised by the love of God. That will guarantee a good life.

If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!

I think it's important that you always transform if you can. That's what I was trained to do. You try and hide yourself as much as you can - that's the key to longevity.

I can only work between the hours of 8:30 and 4:30, because that's when the kids are at school. So I get to do all my work and have all of my fun in that time, which means just sitting on a chair, typing, alternately clicking between writing a column and being on Twitter, and smoking as many cigarettes as I can before my lungs give out.

Writing doesn't come easily to anyone, I think, certainly not to me. But pressure and practice does lend a certain fluency, I think - the more sentences you write, the more sentences you have written, if that slightly Zen confection makes any sense.

I must suppose that reading wonderful writers may, inadvertently, teach an avid reader a great deal -- not only about life and other matters, but about how to write. Therefore doubtless I have benefited from frequent immersions in the glowing genius of others. It would be nice to think so. (I do actually think so). But to improve my skills will never be the prompting force of my reading -- that's just literary lust.

I have one thing in my mind. How can I get people to start taking care of themselves? That's all I think about.

Quit smoking in the hope of growing old. It takes a long time to write. People go to books for wisdom and older authors tend to have more of it.

I felt better about myself that I did it [calling Max Askeli Commander Askeli], rather than have - rather than thinking it and not writing it for being afraid of what might happen to me.

Writing is not like dancing or modeling; it's not something where-if you missed it by age 19-you're finished. It's never too late. Your writing will only get better as you get older and wiser. If you write something beautiful and important, and the right person somehow discovers it, they will clear room for you on the bookshelves of the world-at any age. At least try.

Writing down goals makes you think of what is achievable. It really makes you reflect on what you are today.

Teaching high school in an inner-city school is not an easy task. Every teacher is responsible for 150 teenagers. The amount of work is just mind-boggling. Remember, you're not just doing a job. You have these kids' futures in your hand; you have to inspire them.

I learned to write by writing.

It's my experience that people don't think of fiction writing as being as intellectually serious as other kinds of writing in academia and so without a career as a critic or essayist you can be treated as something of a spiritual medium - a fraud - for "just" writing fiction.

I think I've far exceeded what I ever thought I could possibly do. I'm almost shocked that I'm still around after all of these years . . . and always grateful that I get another turn to do something.

These people that write books on how to succeed and how to think positively make millions because it's something that doesn't occur naturally.

Think positively about yourself.... ask God who made you to keep on remaking you.

No teacher has ever failed from ignorance. That is empiric professional knowledge. Teachers fail because they cannot 'handle the class.' Real education must ultimately be limited to men how INSIST on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.

I think that if I have one hope, 1 ambition, 1 aspiration for the next 4 or 5 years it would be that I can improve as a writer and just be able to say more of what I want to say throught the music.

I had a horrible life habit that I had to change. And I think it's very true, the later we make decisions in life that are important, the harder it is to manage those decisions.

You're young forever when you write. Alfred Hitchcock directed until the day he died. As long as you don't have any dementia or Alzheimer's, if you have your All-Bran every day and clear yourself out, I think your brains are gonna be all right.

Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.