Unsheltered

by Barbara Kingsolver

The shock settled on Willa as a personal failure. As if she’d invited the disaster by failing to see it coming.

When someone mattered like that, you didn’t lose her at death. You lost her as you kept living.

I feel like when things seem easy to me, they should be easy for other people.

His defeats were so rare she could just about count them, or at least the ones she knew about. He took them hard, for lack of practice.

A mother can be only as happy as her unhappiest child. Willa believed in the power of worry to keep another human from flying out of orbit.

“White is not an origin. It’s a mental construct of privilege.”

gross domestic product is a stupid way to measure a country’s success.”

“I become attached, you see. After so many months with these plants, observing them intimately, I begin to feel as if we are of the same world.”

“You and I are not like other people,” he ventured. “We perceive infinite nature as a fascination, not a threat to our sovereignty. But if that sense of unity in all life is not already lodged in a person’s psyche, I’m not certain it can ever be taught.”

“We are given to live in a remarkable time. When the nuisance of old mythologies falls away from us, we may see with new eyes.” “Falls away, or is torn. The old mythologies are a comfort to many.”

Willa marveled at his capacity to live a life undisturbed by actual evidence.

Unprovoked losses one after another—her mother, jobs, savings, Helene, the ceiling—had stripped Willa of the useful illusion that everything would be fine.

It amazed her now to watch people walking through life with their ludicrous trust.

Willa faked composure. He thought a change of scenery would help, and couldn’t quite grasp that her problem wasn’t the scenery or the venue, it was the whole darn show.

“Most people look at a forest and say, ‘Here are trees, and there is dirt.’ They will see nothing of interest unless someone takes them by the hand. I am astonished at how little most people can manage to see.”

“He reads next to nothing. It might interfere with his knowledge of the universe.”

“Presumptions of a lifetime are perilous things to overturn. Presumptions of many lifetimes, in this case.”

“Life should be simpler than this,” he said. “I only want to do my work. Truth is objective. A man should be respected for telling it, not threatened.”

“I suppose it is in our nature,” she said finally. “When men fear the loss of what they know, they will follow any tyrant who promises to restore the old order.”

The only stuff people my age have figured out is what was going to work for us.”

As to the career of avoiding making enemies. You can’t dig any burrow deep enough. Might as well stand and look them in the eye.”

They hunger for any crumb of explanation that sustains their old philosophies.”

The absolutism of these Cheshire-cat dogmas seemed funny, or maybe valiant.

Everybody dances in Cuba. They’ve perfected all the fun things that don’t cost anything, like dancing and sex.

A mother’s unfulfilled ambitions lie heaviest on her daughters.

She says today’s problems can’t be solved by today’s people, we just keep shoring up our bankruptcy with the only tools we know. Making up more and more complicated stories about how we haven’t failed.”

But giving up the physical record of all that work felt like a kind of death. Online wasn’t enough. She wanted it to weigh something.