Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Literature fosters understanding and compassion for people we don't know personally.
In her quote, Barbara Kingsolver highlights the power of fiction and essays to bridge the emotional gap between individuals. By engaging with written narratives, readers can cultivate empathy for those who may be vastly different from themselves, expanding their understanding of the human experience beyond their immediate circle.
Themes
EmpathyLiteratureUnderstandingFictionEssays
In practice
Example use cases
In a book club discussion, you might reference this quote to emphasize the importance of diverse literature.
More from Barbara Kingsolver
All quotes βChildren can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
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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.
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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.
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Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
Barbara KingsolverRead
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.
Barbara KingsolverRead
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In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.
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You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.
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If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.
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What I felt was, if you spend your life just writing fiction, you are going to falsify your material. And the fictional form was going to force you to do things with the material, to dramatize it in a certain way. I thought nonfiction gave one a chance to explore the world, the other world, the world that one didn't know fully.
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