The important thing isn’t the house. It’s the ability to make it. You carry that in your brains and in your hands, wherever you go… It’s one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.
Meaning of the quote
The quote means that the most important thing is not the physical house you live in, but rather the skills and knowledge you have to build a home. You can take those skills with you wherever you go, in your mind and your hands. Carrying your life and skills with you is different from always trying to find a new home somewhere else. The key is to focus on developing your abilities, not just on finding the perfect place to live.
About Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver is an acclaimed American novelist, essayist, and poet who has won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. Her works often explore themes of social justice, biodiversity, and the relationship between humans and their environment. Kingsolver has become a literary powerhouse, with each of her book titles appearing on the New York Times Best Seller list since 1993.
More quotes from Barbara Kingsolver
It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
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We’re animals. We’re born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.
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Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
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The important thing isn’t the house. It’s the ability to make it. You carry that in your brains and in your hands, wherever you go… It’s one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.
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It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn’t.
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What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.
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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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People’s dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It’s what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.
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Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work – that goes on, it adds up.
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Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.
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Terms like that, “Humane Society,” are devised with people like me in mind, who don’t care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.
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What keeps you going isn’t some fine destination but just the road you’re on, and the fact that you know how to drive.
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Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn’t rip off.
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Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
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The truth needs so little rehearsal.
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Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can’t even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.
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