Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Bitter words normally evaporate with the moisture of breath, after a quarrel. In order to become permanent, they require transcribers, reporters, complicit black hearts.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Bitter words spoken in anger fade away unless they are documented or remembered by those who choose to hold onto negativity.
This quote by Barbara Kingsolver suggests that while harsh words said in conflict may be fleeting and forgotten as quickly as they are spoken, they can become enduring if they are recorded or if the hearers choose to dwell on them. The idea emphasizes the power of choice in how we remember interpersonal conflicts and the role that external influences play in perpetuating negativity.
Themes
BitterWordsRelationshipsConflictMemory
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the impact of words in conflict resolution.
More from Barbara Kingsolver
All quotes βChildren can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
Barbara KingsolverRead
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.
Barbara KingsolverRead
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.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
Barbara KingsolverRead
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
Similar quotes
It is exhausting knowing that most of the time the phone rings, most of the time there's an email, most of the time there's a letter, someone wants something of you.
Stephen FryRead
Sometimes I think of Paris not as a city but as a home.
Anais NinRead
it's good to know who hates you and it is good to be hated by the right people
Johnny CashRead
It is still more likely that a woman's power would be seen as aggression, and a man's power would be seen as assertion.
Jessye NormanRead
I don't think it's a good thing to talk about women's issues being exactly the same as the issues of trans women because I don't think that's true.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
Your sweetheart calls you by another's name. His eyes linger too long on your best friend. He talks with excitement about a girl at work. And the fire catches. Jealousy - that sickening combination of possessiveness, suspicion, rage, and humiliation - can overtake your mind and threaten your very core as you contemplate your rival.
Helen FisherRead