Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
There's such a gulf between yourself and who you were then, but people speak to that other person and it answers; it's like having a stranger as a house guest in your skin.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the changes people undergo over time and how their past selves can feel like strangers.
Barbara Kingsolver's quote explores the deep sense of change that occurs within individuals as they grow and evolve. It suggests that while we may have fundamentally changed from who we once were, the old thoughts and experiences can still resonate within us, leading to a disconnection between our past and present selves. The metaphor of having a 'stranger as a house guest in your skin' emphasizes the surreal feeling of recognizing our former selves but feeling distanced from them.
Themes
ChangeIdentityGrowthSelfReflection
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a motivational speech about personal growth.
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.
Barbara KingsolverRead
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