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To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another, - that is surely the base instinct. Baser than even hate, the thing with teeth, which can be stilled with a tone of voice or stunned by beauty. If the whole world of the living has no turn on the single point of remaining alive, that pointed endurance is the poetry of hope. The thing with feathers.

— Barbara Kingsolver

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More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

Every minute with a child takes seven minutes off your life.

Animal Dreams (1990)

A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars.

The Poisonwood Bible (1998)

I also thank Bill McKibben and his 350.org colleagues for the most important work in the world, and the most unending.

Flight Behavior (2012)

The march of human progress seemed mainly a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here.

Animal Dreams (1990)

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth but not its twin.

Animal Dreams (1990)

All Barbara Kingsolver quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Barbara Kingsolver (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.