Quotes from Sue Monk Kidd

no longer looked for the exit. They just kept circling the tight perimeters of the glass, going in their familiar patterns. Their reality had shrunk to that jar. It had become their entire world. It had become safe. Life beyond it had ceased to exist. I'm in the jar, I thought.

I do not want you to miss your sister's wedding," I told him. It was only days away. "Nor do I wish to prolong our goodbye. Let's say farewell here in the place where we've spent these eleven years together.

Such a notion made it virtually impossible to enjoy life! And this, "If God did not exist, man would

Every time it happened, it was like coming upon an empty room I didn't know was there, and stepping in, I would be pierced by it, by the ghost of the one who'd once filled it up. I didn't stumble into this place much anymore, but when I did, it hollowed out little pieces of my chest.

Your moment will come because you will make it come.

I spoke the truth to my husband, but not all the truth.

A daughter is a woman who remains internally dependent, who does not shape her identity and direction as a woman, but tends to accept the identity and direction projected onto her. She tends to become the image of woman that the cultural father idealizes.

I am the first and the last I am she who is honored and she who is mocked I am the whore and the holy woman I am the wife and the virgin I am the mother and the daughter I am she . . . Do not be afraid of my power . . . I am the knowledge of my name I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name THE THUNDER: PERFECT MIND

Everything is the proper stuff of fiction. —VIRGINIA WOOLF

There's no pain on earth that doesn't require a benevolent witness.

creativity. I always return to the idea of her virginity, how it symbolizes self-belonging. I believe the possibility of that exists in a woman. It's

Her words infuriated me. I wondered for a moment if holding my tongue would help my cause with Mother. Was it ever right to sacrifice one's truth for expedience? Mother would do what she would do, wouldn't she? I wondered how it was possible I'd found my words out there in the world, but could lose them in the house where I was born.

My true identity goes beyond the outer roles I play . . there is an authentic 'I' within . . . a divine spark within the soul.

Marija Gimbutas, who'd studied and written about the Goddess-worshiping, earth-centered cultures of prehistory,1 as well as other books I'd read

but I've made my peace with our separation.

Your moment will come, and when it does, you must seize it with all the bravery you can find...Your moment will come because you'll make it come.

the page. It was an ecstasy to write without hesitation, to write everything hidden inside of me, to write with the sort of audacity I wouldn't have found in person.

Remembering Enheduanna, who signed her name to her writing, I reopened the books and signed mine: Ana. Not Ana, daughter of Matthias, or Ana, wife of Jesus. Just Ana.

To avoid fear emboldens it.

The truth," she said, "is that every girl must have ambition knocked out of her for her own good. You are unusual only in your determination to fight what is inevitable. You resisted and so it came to this, to being broken like a horse.

What has happened to our ability to dwell in unknowing, to live inside a question and coexist with the tensions of uncertainty?

So it would happen to me and so it will happen to all who set out to knead their pain and wounds, their hopes and hungers, into bread. Waiting is the yeasting of the human soul.

but now when I'm reviled, I try to look the other way. It does the world no good to return evil for evil. I try now to return good to them instead.

Oh, Ana, Ana. When I tell you all shall be well, I don't mean that life won't bring you tragedy. Life will be life. I only mean you will be well in spite of it. All shall be well, no matter what.