Quotes from Sue Monk Kidd

I could even feel how perishable all my moments really were, how all my life they had come to me begging to be lived, to be cherished even.

I don't remember what they said, only the fury of their words, how the air turned raw and full of welts. Later it would remind me of birds trapped inside a closed room, flinging themselves against the windows and the walls, against each other.

T. Ray said 'Who do you think you are? Julias Shakespeare?' The man sincerely thought that was Shakespeare's first name, and if you think I should have corrected him, you are ignorant about the art of survival.

Where do you come from?...This is the number one most-asked question in all of South Carolina. We want to know if you are one of us, if your cousin knows our cousin, if your little sister went to school with our big brother, if you go to the same Baptist church as our ex-boss. We are looking for ways our stories fit together.

There was a time in Africa the people could fly. Mauma told me this one night when I was ten years old. She said, "Handful, your granny-mauma saw it for herself. She say they flew over trees and clouds. She say they flew like blackbirds. When we came here, we left that magic behind.

It takes so much energy to keep things at bay.

Don't look away. Terrible things will happen now. Unbearable things. Bear it anyway.

I went to stand beside him and looked in the same direction as he, and it seemed for an instant I saw the world as he did, orphaned and broken and staggeringly beautiful, a thing to be held and put back right.

Every person on the face of the earth makes mistakes, Lily. Every last one. We're all so human. Your mother made a terrible mistake, but she tried to fix it.' 'Good night,' I said, and rolled onto my side. 'There is nothing perfect,' August said from the doorway. 'There is only life.

I tell you, there are times when words are so glad to be set free they laugh out loud and prance across their tablets and inside their scrolls.

You think with your head. You know with your heart.

Whatever else you do, listen to your Deepest Self. Love Her and be true to Her, speak Her truth, always.

Whenever the sky quaked, women uttered a blessing: Lord preserve me from the wrath of Lilith. But I could never bring myself to say it. I would whisper instead, Lord, bless the roaring

He'd gone to church for forty years and was only getting worse. It seemed like this should tell God something.

Everything she knew came from living on the scarce side of mercy.

I'm tired of carrying around the weight of the world.

As he left, I peered at Sarah Mapps and her mother, the way they grabbed hands and squeezed in relief, and then at Nina, at the small exultation on her face. She was braver than I, she always had been. I cared too much for the opinions of others, she cared not a whit. I was cautious, she was brash. I was a thinker, she was a doer. I kindled fires, she spread them. And right then and ever after, I saw how cunning the Fates had been. Nina was one wing, I was the other.

we need not avoid our active lives, but simply bring to them a new vision and shift of gravity. for in the center we are rooted in god's love. in such a place there is no need for striving and impatience and dashing about seeking approval.

People say love gets fouled by a difference big as ours. I didn't know for sure whether Miss Sarah's feelings came from love or guilt. I didn't know whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used her. It never was a simple thing. That day, our hearts were pure as they ever would get.

impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log thrown on the fires of love.

It only meant that my natural inclination was to draw my energy from within instead of seeking it outside myself, plus my mom was an introvcert, and so were a lot of normal people. The problem was I was shy on top of that. And we all know how the world loves a shy introvert.

You said you're not like other men. Well, I'm not like other women-you've said so yourself. I have ambitions as men do. I'm racked with longings. I'm selfish and willful and sometimes deceitful. I rebel. I'm easy to anger. I doubt the ways of God. I'm an outsider everywhere I go. People look on me with derision. And you would still have me?

You put his brain in a bird, the bird would fly backwards -Secret Life of the Bees

We are surrounded on all sides by God but often we are no more conscious of him than we are of air pressing against us. We don't turn our attention to Him. (Evelyn Underhill)