Quotes from Sue Monk Kidd

Though I have all knowledge and all faith, and have not charity, I am nothing.

Missus called out to Tomfry, said keep it down, a lady shouldn't know where her bacon comes from. When we heard that, I told Aunt-Sister, missus didn't know what end her bacon went in and what end it came out. Aunt-Sister slapped me into yesterday.

Then you called me daughter. You called out your love." She went and knelt beside Yaltha's chair. "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.

There was a feeling in me like rising water. It broke over me, finally, leaving behind the thing I knew, but didn't know. Nazareth had never been my home. Jesus had been my home.

That's a millstone for you," I told her, "I'm sorry," and the minute it left my mouth, I knew it was coming from the true mind that was me, not the mind for the master to see. I was sorry for her. Sarah had jimmied herself into my heart, but at the same time, I hated the eggshell color of her face, the helpless way she looked at me all the time. She was kind to me and she was part of everything that stole my life.

That's when I got true religion. I didn't know to call it religion back then, didn't know Amen from what-when, I just knew something came into me that made me feel the water belonged to me. I would say, that's my water out there.

I sat up, surprised at the lateness, forgetting for a single, blissful moment the ruin of the previous day, and then all of it returned, winding itself around my ribs until I could barely breathe.

The light came slow and limping, never fully arriving.

didn't know Amen from what when

Night after night, I endured these grand affairs alone, revolted by what objets d'art we were and contemptuous of how hollow society had turned out to be, and yet inexplicably, I was filled with a yearning to be one of them.

There's a place inside you that's inviolate- it's the surest part of you, a piece of Sophia herself. You'll find your way there, when you need to.

I was inspired by the words of Professor Julius Lester, which I kept propped on my desk: "History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.

I rubbed my finger across my cheek and the tip of it came back with a smear of ink. It seemed ironic, sad, beautiful, almost purposeful that I am the wife had been smudged onto my skin.

All shall be well," Yaltha had told me, and when I'd recoiled at how trite and superficial that sounded, she'd said, "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.

If you think the country is quiet, you've never lived in it. Tree frogs alone make you wish for earplugs.

the light in me would not be extinguished.

A tremulous feeling swept over me. Whoever this Messiah king was, he was somewhere in Judea or Galilee, going about his life. I wondered if he knew who he was, or if God had yet to break the terrible news to him.

the spreading tree.

The days he was away crept on tiny, unhurried feet.

I wanted it to suggest how important it is to take the broken, painful, and discarded fragments of our lives and piece them into something whole. There can be healing, and power, too, in giving expression to what's inside of us, in having our voices heard and our pain witnessed. As writer Isak Dinesen put it, "All sorrows can be borne if we put them in a story or tell a story about them.

We might stay here the rest of our lives with the sky slammed shut, but mama had found the part of herself that refused to bow and scrape, and once you find that, you got trouble breathing down your neck.

Bury your writings, so one day they can be found again.

For a woman to birth something other than children and then mother it with the same sense of purpose, attention and care came as an astonishment, even to me.

The birth of a daughter is a loss. Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good.