Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Solitude suggests that even in isolation, we affect the lives around us and the choices we make have profound consequences.
In this quote, Barbara Kingsolver explores the intricate connections between individuals and their environment, emphasizing that solitude does not mean disconnection. Each quiet moment and choice made in solitude reverberates through the world, influencing relationships and interactions within the ecosystem, reminding us that every decision, no matter how small, carries the weight of its impact on others.
Themes
SolitudeConnectionChoicesImpactRelationships
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote in a speech about the importance of community can highlight how our actions, even when alone, matter.
More from Barbara Kingsolver
All quotes →Children 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.
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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.
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