Quotes from Sue Monk Kidd

I don't hold to the idea that God causes suffering and crisis. I just know that those things come along and God uses them. We think life should be a nice, clean ascending line. But inevitably something wanders onto the scene and creates havoc with the nice way we've arranged life to fall in place.

He will use the word love, and the world will not stop spinning but go right on in its courses, like the river, like the bees, like everything.

The whole problem with people is they know what matters but they don't choose it. ~Secret Lives of Bees

As long as people have been on this earth, the moon has been a mystery to us. Think about it. She is strong enough to pull the oceans, and when she dies away, she always comes back again. My mama used to tell me Our Lady lived on the moon and that I should dance when her face was bright and hibernate when it was dark.

the time to assert one's right is when it's denied!

He heard the quake that lived at my center, and he didn't seek to silence it.

Sometimes you want to fall on your knees and thank God in heaven for all the poor news reporting that goes on in the world.

As I squatted on the grass at the edge of the woods, the pee felt hot between my legs. I watched in puddle in the dirt, the smell of it rising into the night. There was no difference between my piss and June's. That's what i thought when I looked at the dark circle on the ground. Piss is Piss.

Embodiment means we no longer say, I had this experience; we say, I am this experience.

The truth may set you free, but first it will shatter the safe, sweet way you live.

I felt a trembling along my skin, a treaveling current that moved up my spine, down my arms, pulsing out from my fingertips. I was practically radiating. The body knows things a long time before the mind catches up to them. I was wondering what my body knew that I didn't.

There is nothing perfect,' August said from the doorway. 'There is only life.

The secret of a good lie is don't overly explain, and throw in one good detail.

The awakening passed from simple recognition of my need for God at the center of my life, to a depth where the will is stirred And that is a deeper place by far. That is the place of response, of unifying one's heart, mind, soul and feet around a decision.

I now understand that writing fiction was a seed planted in my soul, though I would not be ready to grow that seed for a long time.

You speak as if God was white and Southern! As if we somehow owned his image. You speak like a fool. The Negro is not some other kind of creature than we are. Whiteness is not sacred. It can't on defining everything.

Of all the emotions, Hope was the most mysterious. It grew like the blue lotus, snaking up from muddy hearts, beautiful while it lasted.

I missed Rosaleen's snoring the way you'd miss the sound of the ocean waves after you've gotten used to sleeping with them. I didn't realize how it had comforted me. Quiteness has a strange, spongy hum that can nearly break your eardrums.

Spinners take out the bad stuff, leave in the good. I've always thought how nice it would be to have spinners like this for human beings. Just toss them in and let the spinner do its work.

The first week at August's was a consolation, a pure relief. The world will give you that once in a while, a brief time-out; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.

Until we look from the bottom up we have nothing.

I felt someone should personally thank every rock out there for the human misery it had absorbed. We should kiss them one by one & say, we are sorry, but something strong & lasting had to do this for May, & you are the chosen ones. God bless your rock hearts.

Depressed people do things they wouldn't ordinarily do.

People start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different.