Sue Monk Kidd

“Some things were not possible in this world. Children did not have two parents who refused to love them. One, maybe, but for pity's sake, not two.”

“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...”

“Питах се дали бих се влюбила в него, ако беше продавач на обувки в Атланта ... Едва ли щях да се влюбя и това бе разочароващо, тъй като разбиваше и последните ми илюзии.Бях се влюбила в него заради монашеството му, заради верността му към неговата същност, защото си беше самодостатъчен в самотата, защото желаеше да се промени. А най-много обичах в него способността да ме съживи. Той успя да ме върне на самата мен.Бе жестоко и трудно да проумея, че връзката ни никога не е принадлежала на истинския живот с истинска къща, където переш чорапи и режеш лук. Принадлежеше на сенчестите пластове на душата.”

“There is nothing perfect,' August said from the doorway. 'There is only life.”

“Until we look from the bottom up we have nothing.”

“The problem is [people] know what matters, but they don't choose it.”

“Readiness for dying arrives by attending the smallest moment and finding the eternal inside of it.”

“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.”

“Rebirth is almost impossible without the darkness.....I tell myself I am experiencing the death of myself as mother, the death of myself as a younger woman -- precious old lives going by the wayside. Of course, I should let myself grieve. To deny the grief is to squander a transforming and radiant possibility.”

“I only know there's something unsettling about a door that closes forever. I feel a vague lament about the changing of my body, the alterations in my appearance, the bleeding out of motherhood, the fear that I will not find the mysterious green fuse again.”

“It was respect she had for feelings, how she believed it was inimical to the soul to deny them.”

“Women who bear the weight of opposition, she wrote, create a shelter for the rest of us.”

“There's a fullness of time for things, Lily. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course.”

“I was afraid, though, the blame would find a way to stick to them. That's how blame was.”

“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.”

“As long as you live under my roof, you'll do what I say!" he shouted.Then I'll find another roof, I thought."You understand me?" he said."Yes sir, I understand" I said, and I did too. I understand that a new rooftop would do wonders for me.”

“What matters is giving over to what you love.”

“There is nothing perfect, there is only life.”

“August says to Lily," You know some things don't matter that much Lily. Like the colour of the house. How big is that in overall scheme of life? But lifiting person's heart- now that matters. The whole problem with people is – they know what matters but they don't choose it. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters”

“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.- Lily”

“I wonder if that's the perennial story of writers: you find the true light, you lose the true light, you find it again. And maybe again.”

“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.”

“As I descended the stairs, the years between us seemed accumulated everywhere, filling the house, and it seemed strange to me, how love and habit blurred so thoroughly to make a life.”

“We walked to the woods beside the pink house with her stories still pulled soft around our shoulders. I could feel them touching me in places, like an actual shawl.”

“How one minute she was talking to you and the next she had slipped into a private world where she turned her thoughts over and over, digesting stuff most people would choke on. I wanted to say, Teach me how to do that. Teach me how to take all this in.”

“She was wet with my crying. Up around her collar the cotton of her dress was plastered to her skin. I could see her darkness shining through the wet places. She was like a sponge, absorbing what I couldn't hold anymore.”

“I'm tired of carrying around the weight of the world.”

“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.”

“That's because May takes in things differently than the rest of us do." August reached over and laid her hand on my arm. "See, Lily, when you and I hear about some misery out there, it might make us feel bad for a while, but it doesn't wreck our whole world. It's like we have a built-in protection around our hearts that keeps the pain from overwhelming us. But May - she doesn't have that. Everything just comes into her - all the suffering out there - and she feels as if it's happening to her. She can't tell the difference.”

“I climbed into the honey wagon with my hair uncombed, with May handing me buttered toast and orange juice through the window and Rosaleen sticking in thermoses of water, both of them practically running alongside the truck while August rolled out of the driveway. I felt like the Red Cross springing to action to save the bee queendom.”

“It was possible to close your eyes and exit life without actually dying. You just had to faint.”

“The secret of a good lie is don't overly explain, and throw in one good detail.”

“Ee come a time when eby tub haffa res pon e won bottom, said Hepzibah, then translated: At some point in life, you have to stand on your own two feet.”

“I realize I'm trying to work out the boundaries. How to love her without interfering. How to step back and let her have her private world and yet still be an intimate part of it. When she talks about her feelings, I have to consciously tell myself she wants me to receive them, not fix them.”

“You've been halfway living your life for too long. May was saying that 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.”

“I felt like I'd unzipped my skin and momentarily stepped out of it, leaving a crazy person in charge”

“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.”

“You know, some things don't matter that much...Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart - now, that matters.”

“Every little thing wants to be loved.”

“Embodiment means we no longer say, I had this experience; we say, I am this experience.”

“Everybody needs a seashell in her bathroom to remind her the ocean is her home.”

“You are my everlasting home. Don't you ever be afraid. I am enough. We are enough.”

“Make the world better. Take the meanness out of people's hearts.”

“Did you know there are thirty-two names for love in one of the Eskimo languages?" August said. "And we just have this one. We are so limited, you have to use the same word.”

“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.”

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

“Have you ever written a letter you knew you could never mail but you needed to write it anyway?”

“I felt someone should personally thank every rock out there for the human misery it had absorbed. We should kiss them one by one & say, we are sorry, but something strong & lasting had to do this for May, & you are the chosen ones. God bless your rock hearts.”

“Indeed, love is everything.”

“The first week at August's was a consolation, a pure relief. The world will give you that once in a while, a brief time-out; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.”