Quotes from Sue Monk Kidd

I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. Was there ever a more galling verse in the Bible?

Maybe one reason I had avoided anger was that like a lot of people I had thought there were only two responses to anger: to deny it or to strike out thoughtlessly. But other responses are possible.

When we adopt this particular ego mask, we invest ourselves in the notion that those who shine the brightest are loved the most. This comes from the distorted idea that meaning and acceptance come from what we do, not who we are. We buy into the widespread notion that "light" emanates from our achievements, not from the divine fire within our soul.

ate under the cool of the pine trees.

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 knew it would be selfish to pour this into her cup when it was already to the brim with grief for May.

How did bees ever become equated with sex? They do not live a riotous sex life themselves. A hive suggests cloister more than bordello. —The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men

You could say I'd never had a true religious moment, the kind where you know yourself spoken to by a voice that seems other than yourself, spoken to so genuinely you see the words shining on trees and clouds. But I had such a moment right then, standing in my own ordinary room. I heard a voice say, Lily Melisa Owens, your jar is open. In a matter of seconds I knew exactly what I had to do -- leave .

It reassured me suddenly to think of God not as a person like ourselves, but as an essence that lived everywhere. God could be love, as Jesus believed. For me, he would be I Am Who I Am, the beingness in our midst.

What is bound will be unbound. What is cast down will be lifted up. That is the promise of Our Lady.

Still, I couldn't let the matter go entirely—T. Ray thinking I was so desperate I would invent an invasion of bees to get attention. Which is how I got the bright idea of catching a jar of these bees, presenting them to T. Ray, and saying, "Now who's making things up?

Martha Whites were a form of punishment only T. Ray could have dreamed up. I shut my mouth instantly.

They don't know what matters and what doesn't I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don't choose it

My first and only memory of my mother was the day she died.

She'd immersed herself in forbidden privileges, yes, but mostly in the belief she was worthy of those privileges. What she'd done was not a revolt, it was a baptism.

All shall be well. I don't mean that life won't bring you tragedy. I only mean that 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.

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

Sarah shifted on the bench. I worried she was winding up to say something, that Sky would start humming now, that the fright spring-coiled inside me would break loose. Then I remembered the widow dress I was wearing. I made a sound with my lips like I was trying to give him an answer, but choking on the words, seized by my grief, and I didn't have to pretend that much. I felt sorrow for my life, for what I'd lived and seen and known, for what was lost to me, and the weeping turned real.

That was the way mauma had lived her whole life. She used to say, you got to figure out which end of the needle you're gon be, the one that's fastened to the thread or the end that pierces the cloth.

August said, "You know what? You think too much. It would do you a world of good to stop thinking and just go with your feelings once in a blue moon.

When a bee flies, a soul will rise

fix it. But I know my impulse to tear open the closed, secret place in my daughter comes from a need to stave off my own fear. When is the impulse to help an adult child a wise intervention

Probably one or two moments in your whole life you will hear a dark whispering spirit, a voice coming from the center of things. It will have blades for lips and will not stop until it speaks the one secret thing at the heart of it all.

It's my earliest memory: arranging my brother's marbles into words. It is summer, and I am beneath the oak that stands in the back corner of the work yard. Thomas, ten, whom I love above all the others, has taught me nine words: SARAH, GIRL, BOY, GO, STOP, JUMP, RUN, UP, DOWN. He has written them on a parchment and given me a pouch of forty-eight glass marbles with which to spell them out, enough to shape two words at a time.