The Lacuna Quotes

“The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down." - Mrs. Brown”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“You force people to stop asking questions, and before you know it they have auctioned off the question mark, or sold it for scrap. No boldness. No good ideas for fixing what's broken in the land. Because if you happen to mention it's broken, you are automatically disqualified.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don't know.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“The past is all we know of the future.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Everyone should get dirt on his hands each day. Doctors, intellectuals. Politicians, most of all. How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man, if we don't respect his work?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“War so conspicuously benefits rich men and kills the poor ones.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“It's a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“He needs to go rub his soul against life.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Soli, let me tell you. The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he's entitled to joy rather than submission?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Most of them don't know what communism is, could not pick it out of a lineup. They only know what anticommunism is. The two are practically unrelated.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“There are some who'd hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think's been too lucky.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Because nothing wondrous can come in this world unless it rests on the shoulders of kindness.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Mexico admits you through an arched stone orifice into the tree-filled courtyard of its heart, where a dog pisses against a wall and a waiter hustles through a curtain of jasmine to bring a bowl of tortilla soup, steaming with cilantro and lime. Cats stalk lizards among the clay pots around the fountain, doves settle into the flowering vines and coo their prayers, thankful for the existence of lizards. The potted plants silently exhale, outgrowing their clay pots. Like Mexico's children they stand pinched and patient in last year's too-small shoes. ”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Bitter words normally evaporate with the moisture of breath, after a quarrel. In order to become permanent, they require transcribers, reporters, complicit black hearts.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“I should like to write my books only for the dear person who lies awake reading in bed until page last, then lets the open book fall gently on her face, to touch her smile or drink her tears.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Loose lips sink ships.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“A blank space on a form, the missing page, a void, a hole in your knowledge of someone--it's still some real thing. It exists. You don't get to fill it in with whatever you want.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what's not in it.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade. I'm one of those. We don't bend anything.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“A novel! Why do you say this won't liberate anyone? Where does any man go to be free, whether he is poor or rich or even in prison? To Dostoyevsky! To Gogol!”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“But newspapers have a duty to truth,' Van said.
Lev clucked his tongue. 'They tell the truth only as the exception. Zola wrote that the mendacity of the press could be divided into two groups: the yellow press lies every day without hesitating. But others, like the Times, speak the truth on all inconsequential occasions, so they can deceive the public with the requisite authority when it becomes necessary.'
Van got up from his chair to gather the cast-off newspapers. Lev took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. 'I don't mean to offend the journalists; they aren't any different from other people. They're merely the megaphones of the other people.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna