Quotes from Sue Monk Kidd

For women, the cruelest state is to be denied; for men it's to be stricken with shame

As I descended the stairs, the years between us seemed accumulated everywhere, filling the house, and it seemed strange to me, how love and habit blurred so thoroughly to make a life.

Her name was Mary, and there ends any resemblance to the mother of our Lord.

We make our moments, Ana, or we do not.

All my life, in nameless, indeterminate ways, I'd tried to complete my life with someone else--first my father, then Hugh, even Whit, and I didn't want that anymore. I wanted to belong to myself.

Squeezing it in my palm, I prayed, Please, God, let this seed you planted in me bear fruit.

As writer Isak Dinesen put it, "All sorrows can be borne if we put them in a story or tell a story about them.

Quietness has a strange, spongy hum that can nearly break your eardrums

I hope for everything.

Sunset is the saddest light there is

But you can't talk yourself out of anger. Either you are angry or you're not.

What most sets you apart is the spirit in you that rebels and persists.

Cello music swelled out from the house, rising higher and higher until it lifted off the earth, sailing toward Venus.

It was the most beautiful, wicked blasphemy I'd ever heard.

When I looked up, Yaltha's eyes were settled on me. She said, "A man's holy of holies contains God's laws, but inside a woman's there are only longings." Then she tapped the flat bone over my heart and spoke the charge that caused something to flame up in my chest: "Write what's inside here, inside your holy of holies.

I think for you, too, God cannot be contained.

I cannot forget that you left me. That knowledge will always remain in a corner of me, but I wish to let myself be loved.

also learned a model of relating that unwittingly promoted women's psychological dependence on men and male authority. Women's personal journeys, goals, and quests were encouraged only to the extent that they didn't interfere with those of husband or children. A woman's surrender of herself on behalf of the rest of the family was (and often still is) extolled as the highest virtue.

The moment she lifted me, I was wrapped in her smell. The scent got laid down in me in a permanent way and had all the precision of cinnamon.

I felt I'd stumbled upon an amazing secret—it was possible to close your eyes and exit life without actually dying.

She was trapped same as me, but she was trapped by her mind, by the minds of the people round her, not by the law. At the African church, Mr Vesey used to say, 'Be careful, you can get enslaved twice, once in your body and once in your mind.' I tried to tell her that. I said, 'My body might be a slave, but not my mind. For you, it's the other way round.

It never occurred to her their gaiety wasn't contentment, but survival.

If everyone was so keen to Christianize the slaves, why weren't they taught to read the Bible for themselves?

I heard mauma say, I don't spec to get free. The only way I'm getting free is for you to get free.