The Poisonwood Bible Quotes

“This forest eats itself and lives forever.”

“If God had amused himself inventing the lilies of the field, he surely knocked His own socks off with the African parasites.”

“Childhood was nothing guaranteed. It seemed to me, in fact, like something more or less invented by white people and stuck onto the front end of grown-up life like a frill on a dress.”

“With no men around, everyone was surprisingly lighthearted.”

“Since no one can read, every candidate is designated by a symbol. Wisely these men choose to represent themselves with useful things - knife, bottle, matches, cooking pot.”

″‘When I want to take God at his word exactly, I take a peep out the window at Creation. Because that, darling, He makes fresh for us every day without a lot of dubious middle managers.‘”

“The death of something living is the price of our survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.”

“My father says a girl who fails to marry is veering from God’s plan - that’s what he’s got against college...”

“There are Christians and then there are Christians.”

“The loss of a life: unwelcome. Immoral? I don’t know.”

“The rusted embroidery hoops left an unsightly orange ring on the linen that may have damaged my prospects for good.”

“We Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.”

“Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you are good, bad things can still happen. And if you are bad, you can still be lucky.”

“‘You make it sound like she’s an accessory he needs to go with his outfit.’”

“To resist occupation, whether you’re a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy. Conquest and liberation and democracy and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line.”

“Being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different, though. You could say the view is larger.”

“Everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place.”

“God works, as is very well known, in mysterious ways. There is just nothing you can name that He won’t do, now and then.”

“We aimed for no more than to have dominion over every creature that moved upon the earth.”

“So much depends on the tone of voice.”