—I WON’T ASK FOR PROMISES, SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIE

 

 

THE BEAN TREES    /    Barbara Kingsolver

 

 

“You’re holding a lot of tension here.”

 

It’s terrible to lose somebody. But it’s also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and I think that’s got to be so much worse.

 

I’m just totally screwed up, that’s all there is to it.

 

Sadness is more or less like a head cold—with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

 

It seems like almost anything is better than having only yourself to blame when you screw up.

 

--“Taylor, honey, if you don’t mind my saying so, I think you’re asking the wrong question.”

--“How do you mean?”

--“You’re asking yourself, Can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm’s way her whole life long? The answer is no, you can’t. But nobody can either.”

--“So, what’s the right thing to ask?”

--“Do I want to try?”

 

You were just looking for a disaster, that’s all. If you look hard enough you can always come up with what you want.

 

If the truth was a snake it would have bitten me a long time ago. It would have had me for dinner.

 

You’ve got to eat a peck of dirt before you die.

 

It’s a sad day for all of us if I’m the hero here.

 

It’s interesting how hard it is to be depressed around a three-year-old. If you’re paying attention.

 

There seemed to be no end to the things that could be hiding, waiting out, right where you thought you could see it all.

 

Only two things are worth making so much noise about, death and sex. 

 

I never could figure out why men thought they could impress a woman by making the world out to be such a dangerous deal. I mean, we’ve got to live in the exact same world every damn day of the week, don’t we?

 

I decided he was dumber than he was mean.  

 

“You must come from Hog-Norton, where pigs go to church and play the organ.”

 

I’d forgotten how trees full of bird sounds made you sense the world differently; that life didn’t just stop at eye level.

 

It seems like, if you get to know them well enough, everybody has had something awful happen to them.

 

Even a spotted pig looks black at night. It means that things always look different, and usually better, in the morning.

 

There was a type of woodpecker that said, “Ha, ha, ha, to hell with you!”

 

“Will you look at that,” I said. It was another miracle. That flower trees were turning into bean trees.

 

In Spanish, the way you say you have a baby is to say that you give it to the light. Isn’t that nice? 

 

Everything you get is really just on loan.

 

There are times when it’s just impossible to say good-bye.