Sue Monk Kidd Quotes

The month of August had turned into a griddle where the days just lay there and sizzled.

I was a very good nurse, but I burned out after eight years or so because it wasn't what I truly wanted to do. Writing is what I belong to.

You just don't interrupt somebody's mourning with your own problems.

Life will be life and death will be death.

It's always been my hope that I would write a story that would inspire and would connect with people in a way that would touch hearts.

Sunk in the mud, it took all my strength to flip it over. I lifted out the oar and inspected the bottom for holes and rotted wood. Seeing none, I gathered up my skirt, climbed in, and paddled to the middle of the pond, an untouchable place, far from everything. I tried to think what I would say to him, worried my voice would slink off again and leave me. I remained there a long while, lapping on the surface. Vapor curled on the water, dragonflies pricked the air, and I thought it all beautiful.

That strange turbulence that rises when you begin to wash up on the island of your own little self and you don't see how you could ever sustain yourself there.

People who think dying is the worst thing don't know a thing about life. My

I got my Bachelor's degree in nursing and worked nine years - even taught nursing in a college - before I stopped and said to myself, 'This is not who I am. I am not really a nurse inside. I'm a writer.'

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.

I learned a long time ago that some people would rather die than forgive. It's a strange truth, but forgiveness is a painful and difficult process. It's not something that happens overnight. It's an evolution of the heart.

The truth is, in order to heal we need to tell our stories and have them witnessed ... The story itself becomes a vessel that holds us up, that sustains, that allows us to order our jumbled experiences into meaning.
As I told my stories of fear, awakening, struggle, and transformation and had them received, heard, and validated by other women, I found healing.
I also needed to hear other women's stories in order to see and embrace my own. Sometimes another woman's story becomes a mirror that shows me a self I haven't seen before. When I listen to her tell it, her experience quickens and clarifies my own. Her questions rouse mine. Her conflicts illumine my conflicts. Her resolutions call forth my hope. Her strengths summon my strengths. All of this can happen even when our stories and our lives are very different.

You think you want to know something, and then once you do, all you can think about is erasing it from your mind.

One day i will have to forgive life for ending. I tell myself I will have to learn how to let life be life with its unbearable finality ... just be what ti is.

It had never been a secret that I'd idealized my father, that I would've done anything to please him--to be the apple of his eye (to use the worst and most obvious cliché)--but what I didn't quite get until the painting was the sadness of all that trying. I hadn't understood the small, powerless places it had taken me. But even more than this, I had never completely realized how this same thing had gone on with Hugh. I'd accommodated myself to him for twenty years without any real idea of what it was to have possession of my own self. To own myself, so to speak.

I worried so much about how I looked and whether I was doing things right, I felt half the time I was impersonating a girl instead of really being one.

Betrayal of any kind is hard, but betrayal by one's religion is excruciating. It makes you want to rage and weep.

A moment of grace. There rose up within me a profound sense of being loved. I felt "gathered together" and encircled by a Presence completely loving, as if I were enveloped by the music of a love song created just for me. It was not overwhelming or even emotional. Just a warm knowing that I was in God's loving embrace ... centered and unified there.
[Love]encounters cannot be analyzed, only shared. If you take a butterfly, Robert Frost said, and pin it down into a box, you no longer have a butterfly.

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.

To be honest, I had been restless ... The sensation would rise suddenly like freight from the ocean floor
the unexpected discontent of cows in their pasture. The constant chewing of all that cud.

I'd forgotten how that sort of craving felt, how it rose suddenly and loudly from the pit of my stomach like a flock of startle birds, then floated back down in the slow, beguiling way of feathers.

All that paddling around in the alphabet soup of one's childhood, scooping up letters, hoping to arrange them into enlightening sentences that would explain why things had turned out the way they had. It evoked a certain mutiny in me.

The symbol of Goddess gives us permission. She teaches us to embrace the holiness of every natural, ordinary, sensual dying moment. Patriarchy may try to negate body and flee earth with its constant heartbeat of death, but Goddess forces us back to embrace them, to take our human life in our arms and clasp it for the divine life it is - the nice, sanitary, harmonious moment as well as the painful, dark, splintered ones.
If such a consciousness truly is set loose in the world, nothing will be the same. It will free us to be in a sacred body, on a sacred planet, in sacred communion with all of it. It will infect the universe with holiness. We will discover the Divine deep within the earth and the cells of our bodies, and we will lover her there with all our hearts and all our souls and all our minds.

Stories are amazing and powerful because they can resonate with people depending on their needs and experiences and speak truths we need to hear in that moment in time.

So I taught Sunday school and brought dishes to all manner of potlucks and tried to adjust the things I heard from the pulpit to my increasingly incongruent faith.

Mauma told me, It gon be hard from here on, Handful.

Their laughter would ring out abruptly, a sound Mother welcomed. "Our slaves are happy," she would boast. It never occurred to her their gaiety wasn't contentment, but survival.

T. Ray said 'Who do you think you are? Julias Shakespeare?' The man sincerely thought that was Shakespeare's first name, and if you think I should have corrected him, you are ignorant about the art of survival.

The female soul is no small thing. Neither is a woman's right to define the sacred from a woman's perspective.

Back then, Miss Sarah pulled words up from her throat like she was raising water from a well.

time to assert one's right is when it's denied!" "I'm sorry,

That's what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log thrown on the fires of love. ~Page 133.

I eventually found that the soul is more than an immortal commodity to win and save. It is the repository of the inner divine, the truest part of us.

If you don't know where your're going, you should know where you came from.

No assurance, no platitude, no promise of God's mercy. Just a stark reminder that death was part of life. She offered me nothing but a way to accept whatever came-Let life be life. There was a quiet relinquishment in the words.

And when you get down to it, Lily, that is the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love but to persist in love.

He gazed at me with kindness and pity. "To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil." I turned

Was it ever right to sacrifice one's truth for expedience?

It's always a marvel when one's pain doesn't settle into bitterness, but brings forth kindness instead.

I was shrewd like mauma. Even at ten I knew this story about people flying was pure malarkey. We weren't some special people who lost our magic. We were slave people, and we weren't going anywhere. It was later I saw what she meant. We could fly all right, but it wasn't any magic to it.

I do read a poem almost every morning. Unless I'm really, really late, I have to get my poem in.

"Why is it sports is the only thing white people see us being successful at? I don't want to play football," he said. "I wanna be a lawyer." "That's fine with me," I said, a little annoyed. "I've just never heard of a Negro lawyer, that's all. You've got to hear of these things before you can imagine them." "Bullshit. You gotta imagine what's never been."

Your moment will come because you'll make it come.

Spinners take out the bad stuff, leave in the good. I've always thought how nice it would be to have spinners like this for human beings. Just toss them in and let the spinner do its work.

Bless the largeness inside me, no matter how I fear it.

Don't be telling me
can't be done. That's some god damney white talk, that's what that is.

She was a small, hot-tempered woman who wore a widow's cap with strings floating at her cheeks, and when it was cold, a squirrely fur cloak and tiny fur-lined shoes. She was known to line girls up on the Idle Bench for the smallest infraction and scream at them until they fainted. I despised her, and her "polite education for the female mind," which was composed

It was a circumambulation of such precise, ritualistic grief no one interfered.

It was the oldest sound there was. Souls flying away.

Where had I been that I didn't know about imaginary friends? I could see the point of it. How a lost part of yourself steps out and remind you who you could be with a little work.

Words are the most beautiful things existed in the world, but they die as fast as they were born, unless you convert them to act!
The Secret Life of Bees

Still everyone, including the abbot, had said that he was running away from his grief. They'd had no idea what they were talking about. He'd cradled his grief, almost to the point of loving it. For so long he refused to give it up, because leaving it behind was like leaving her.

I didn't know whether this Mr. Smyth was behaving like white people, or if it just showed something vile about all people.

I sat at her desk and turned one page after another, staring at what looked like bits and pieces of black lace laid cross the paper.

I longed for it in that excruciating way one has of romanticizing the life she didn't choose.

When it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid.

Wore out from all that, I did what we call shilly-shally. Poking round up to no good.

God fills us with all sorts of yearnings that go against the grain of the world - but the fact those yearnings often come to nothing, well, I doubt that's God's doing." She cut her eyes at me and smiled. "I think we know that's men's doing.

I actually grew up in a house in which bees lived in one of the walls, and they lived there 18 years, in fact, so it wasn't a fleeting thing.

Watch now," Handful told her. "This rabbit goes under the log, and this rabbit goes over the log. You make them hop like that all the way down. See, that's how you make a plait - hop over, hop under." Nina took possession of the rabbits and the log and created a remarkably passable braid. Handful and I oohed and ahhed as if she'd carved a Florentine statue. It was a winter evening like so many others that passed in quiet predictability: the room flushed with lamplight, a fire nesting on the grate, an early dark flattening against the windows, while my two companions fussed over me at the dresser.

Nobody around here had ever seen a lady beekeeper till her. She liked to tell everybody that women made the best beekeepers, 'cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting. It comes from years of loving children and husbands.

I recall that whenever I struggled, doubted, wondered if I could pull my thread into this fabric, someone or something would always appear
a friend, a stranger, a figure in a dream, a book, an experience, some shining thing in nature
and remind me that this thing I was undertaking was holy to the core. I would learn again that it is all right for women to follow the wisdom in their souls, to name their truth, to embrace the Sacred Feminine, that there is undreamed voice, strength, and power in us.
And that is what I have come to tell you. I have come over the wise distances to tell you: She is in us.

It was the first time I'd ever said the words to another person, and the sound of them broke open my heart.

I am grown, with children of my own. But inside I am still a daughter. 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.

When I looked up through the web of trees, the night sky fell over me, and for a moment, I lost my boundaries, feeling like the sky was my own skin and the moon was my heart beating up there in the dark.

I can't think of anything I'd rather have more than somebody lovin' me.

I've noticed that most people tend to go through life preserving their differences from others.

Every living creature on the earth is special. You want to be the one that puts an end to one of them?

My stories have a deep spiritual core because I have a deep desire to understand things of the spirit, but yet I don't think I've written these stories from any kind of specific religious agenda because I don't think that would work.

In writing The Invention of Wings, 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." ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My deepest thanks to . . .

Gradually it occurred to me that we spend a great deal of life asleep and that dreams are little narratives, little stories. I thought, 'Who's choreographing this stuff?'

There's a gap somehow between empathy and activism. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of 'soul force' - something that emanates from a deep truth inside of us and empowers us to act. Once you identify your inner genius, you will be able to take action, whether it's writing a check or digging a well.

Slaves, I admonish you to be content with your lot, for it is the will of God! Your obedience is mandated by scripture. It is commanded by God through Moses. It is approved by Christ through his apostles, and upheld by the church. Take heed, then, and may God in his mercy grant that you will be humbled this day and return to your masters as faithful servants.

Strangest of all, it was the first time thoughts of equality had entered my head, and I could only attribute it to God, with whom I'd lately taken up and who was proving to be more insurrectionary than law-abiding.O

I realize that I can be with someone, but on a deeper level I'm not available to them at all. I have attention deficit disorder of the soul.

When we stop perceiving, assuming, and theorizing from the top, the dominant view, and instead go to the bottom of the social pyramid and identify with those who are oppressed and disenfranchised, a whole new way of relating opens up. Until we look from the bottom up we have seen nothing.

I read usually in the morning, in my kitchen at breakfast - a short reading time, usually poetry. I read in bed every night. I usually get in bed pretty early with a book, and I read until I can't prop my eyes open anymore - sometimes rather late.

I will meet you in the place called Deathless, I whispered.

I marveled at how mixed up people got when it came to love. I myself, for instance. It seemed like I was now thinking of Zach forty minutes out of every hour, Zach, who was an impossibility. That's what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log throw on the fires of love.

The sting shot pain all the way to my elbow, causing me to marvel at how much punishment a minuscule creature can inflict. I'm prideful enough to say I didn't complain. After you get stung, you can't get unstung no matter how much you whine about it. I just dived back into the riptide of saving bees.

She has been the keeper of home for me, and I have been the keeper of journey for her. And now we look for the lost portion in each other.

We need Goddess consciousness to reveal earth's holiness. Divine feminine imagery opens up the notion that the earth is the body of the Divine, and when that happens, the Divine cannot be contained solely in a book, church, dogma, liturgy, theological system, or transcendent spirituality. The earth is no longer a mere backdrop until we get to heaven, something secondary and expendable. Mater becomes inspirited; it breathes divinity. Earth comes alive and sacred. And we find ourselves alive in the midst of her and forever altered.

I walked past the stable and carriage house. The path took me cross the whole map of the world I knew. I hadn't yet seen the spinning globe in the house that showed the rest of it. p7

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. Kneeling on the floor, unable to stop shuddering, I heard it plainly. It said, You are unlovable ...

I didn't know for sure whether Miss Sarah's feelings came from love or guilt. I didn't know whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used her. It never was a simple thing.

August: You know, somethings don't matter that much ... like the color of a house ... But lifting a person's heart
now that matters. The whole problem with people

Lily: They don't know what matters and what doesn't ...
August: ... They know what matters, but they don't choose it ... The hardest thing on earth is to choose what matters.

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.

We 're all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren 't we? I suspect Zgod plants these yearlings in us so we'll at least try and change the course of things. We must try, that's all" - Lucretia Mott in The Invention of Wings

She'll outlive the last cockroach

To be fully human, fully myself, To accept all that I am, all that you envision, This is my prayer. Walk with me out to the rim of life, Beyond security. Take me to the exquisite edge of courage And release me to become.

Every girl comes into the world with varying degrees of ambition," she said, "even if it's only the hope of not belonging body and soul to her husband.

I felt the old, irrepressible ache to know what my point in the world might be.

If you aren't giving people something to talk about, you've become too dull.

The ultimate authority of my life is not the Bible; it is not confined between the covers of a book. It is not something written by men and frozen in time. It is not from a source outside myself. My ultimate authority is the divine voice in my own soul. Period.

For me, writing a novel goes on for years, and the solitude goes on, too. It tends to swallow me at times. I know it's a problem when my husband sends the dog in to retrieve me.

I couldn't imagine what it cost him to say these words. "I do," I said. "And you must forgive me.

Reading was a kind of freedom, the only one I could give

I write in a journal occasionally. But it is not a daily discipline for me.

From now on when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I planned to say, Amnesiac.

When I was being forgiving, I said that my mother was simply exhausted. I suspected, though, she was simply mean.