Quotes from Sue Monk Kidd

The problem is [people] know what matters, but they don't choose it.

She couldn't get free and she couldn't pop missus on the back of her head with a cane, but she could take her silk. You do your rebellions any way you can.

Indeed, as I made my critique, the problem seemed to me not that there are differences but rather how we value these differences.

Actually, you can be bad at something, Lily, but if you love doing it, that will be enough.

You know, she's really just a figurehead off an old ship, but the people needed comfort and rescue, so when they looked at it, they saw Mary, and so the spirit of Mary took it over. Really, her spirit is everywhere, Lily, just everywhere. Inside rocks and trees and even people, but sometimes it will get concentrated in certain places and just beam out at you in a special way.

The road of 'God alone' struck me with unsettling fear. So I lingered in a kind of limbo. Unable to go back, unable to go on. Uncertain. Tentative. How strange that we tend to stand ankle-deep in the spiritual life even though the grounding depth of intimacy with God is the most nourishing experience of our lives and affirms our very being!

Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.

I feared my grief would turn to despair, that it would become a skin I couldn't shed.

women internalize the feminine wound or feminine inferiority so deeply, there's little or no female authority and esteem to fall back on. So they seek it by adopting and pleasing patriarchal standards.

I couldn't be angered by her deceit-it didn't come from treachery. We women harbor our intimacies in locked places in our bodies. They are ours to relinquish when we choose.

To write again felt like a return to myself.

Lightning came, not jagged but in soft, golden licks across the sky

This surprised me because it made me realize that what I sought was not outside myself. It was within me, already there, waiting. Awakening was really the act of remembering myself, remembering this deep Feminine Source.

Psychotherapist Anne Wilson Schaef compares living in patriarchy to living in polluted air. "When you are in the middle of pollution, you are usually unaware of it. You eat in it, sleep in it, work in it, and sooner or later start believing that is just the way the air is," she writes.41

there is a seed of light inside of us, a mysterious Inner Voice.

To be honest, I had been restless...The sensation would rise suddenly like freight from the ocean floor--the unexpected discontent of cows in their pasture. The constant chewing of all that cud.

Up until then I'd thought that white people and colored people getting along was the big aim, but after that I decided everybody being colorless together was a better plan.

People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It's that hard. If God said in plain language, "I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die," a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin.

I don't mean that life won't bring you tragedy. I only mean you will be well in spite of it. There's a place in you that is inviolate. You'll find your way there, when you need to. And you'll know then what I speak of.

Every girl comes into the world with varying degrees of ambition," she said, "even if it's only the hope of not belonging body and soul to her husband.

I want to tell you I'm strong and resolute, but in truth, I feel afraid and alone and uncertain. I feel as if he has died, and I suppose in some way it's true. I'm left with nothing but this strange beating in my heart that tells me I'm meant to do something in this world. I cannot apologize for it, or for loving this small beating as much as him.

Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.

my awakening had shown me new truths about my religion, my life, and the lives of women. I had survived a landslide of awareness. But I didn't know if I could act on them. When you can't go forward and you can't go backward and you can't stay where you are without killing off what is deep and vital in yourself, you are on the edge of creation.

To know exactly where you're headed may be the best way to go astray. Not all who loiter are lost.