Quotes from Sue Monk Kidd

stories must be told, if they are not told, they die. then we forget who we are and why we are here

Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies.

I watched him, filled with tenderness and ache. I don't know if that's what he wanted to ask me, but it's something everybody wants – for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters.

For a moment I felt the quiet hungering thing that comes inside when you return to the pale of your origins, and then the ache of mis-belonging.

It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I've never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.

That night in my bed, when I closed my eyes, bee hum ran through my body. Ran through the whole earth. It was the oldest sound there was. Souls flying away.

You're looking for a reason, she said. And that doesn't help. It doesn't change the present.

Mr. Vesey, though, he didn't like any kind of talk about heaven. He said that was the coward's way, pining for life in the hereafter, acting like this one didn't mean a thing. I had to side with him on that.

People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It's that hard.

It takes honeybee workers ten million foraging trips to gather enough nectar to make one pound of honey. —Bees of the World

You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course. That's what I've been trying to do.

Every time I shot back, What's wrong with living in a dream world? And she'd say, You have to wake up.

If I ever managed to get to heaven after everything I'd done, I hoped I would get just a few minutes for a private conference with God. I wanted to say, Look, I know you meant well creating the world and all, but how could you let it get away from you like this? How come you couldn't stick with your original idea of paradise? People's lives were a mess.

I was concious of Zach's breathing, his shirt pulled across his chest, one arm draped on the steering wheel. The hard, dark look of it. The mystery of his skin. It was foolish to think some things were beyond happening, even being attracted to Negroes. I'd honestly thought such a thing couldn't happen, the way water could nog run uphill or salt could not taste sweet. A law of nature.

The whole fabric of honey bee society depends on communication—on an innate ability to send and receive messages, to encode and decode information. —The Honey Bee

It'd been Lucy who ran tattling to Miss Mary about my lettering under the tree, and Miss Mary had run tattling to missus. I'd judged Lucy to be stupid, but she was only weak-willed and wanting to get in good with Miss Mary. I never did forgive her, and I don't know if Miss Sarah forgave her sister, cause what came from all that snitching turned the tide on Miss Sarah's life. Her studying was over and done.

Even in the dark I could see that [the tree] was dying, and doing it alone in the middle of these unconcerned pines. That was the absolute way of things. Loss takes up inside of everything sooner or later and eats right through it.

To constantly relive the past is to miss out on the present.

Is the library all you hoped?" "It's a holy of holies," I said. And it was, but I could feel the tiny lump of anger tucked beneath my awe. A half million scrolls and codices were within these walls, and all but a handful were by men. They had written the known world.

It is the peculiar nature of the world to go spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening.

When is the impulse to help an adult child a wise intervention and when is it self-serving and prying? I have an uneasy feeling I will have to carry the question around for a while like some grating pebble in my shoe.

As I walked, I began to hear the sound of running water. It's impossible to hear that sound and not go searching for the source.

Ich beneidete die Schildkroeten um ihre Panzer in denen sie jederzeit verschwinden konnten.

All sorrows can be borne if we put them in a story or tell a story about them.