Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Most of my books have been about the complex ways an individual depends on community.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the interconnectedness of individuals and their communities.
Barbara Kingsolver emphasizes the theme of reliance on community throughout her works, suggesting that individual identity and experiences are deeply influenced by social connections. The complexity of these relationships reflects not only personal dependencies but also the broader societal fabric that shapes oneβs life.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of community service during a public seminar.
Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
Caring for others is an expression of what it means to be fully human.
Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.
Unlike people of my generation, my children and my grandchildren have grown up living with, knowing, people who were outwardly gay and lesbian. And they have learned that they're just like us... And when you see that they're just like us, the rationale for discrimination melts away.
What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you.
This endured absence is nothing more or less than forgetfulness. I am, intermittently, unfaithful. This is the condition of my survival.
If you start to feel that you have given up too many parts of yourself to be with your partner, then one day you will end up looking for another person in order to reconnect with those lost parts.
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