Sue Monk Kidd Quotes & Sayings

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. — Sue Monk Kidd

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. — Sue Monk Kidd

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. — Sue Monk Kidd

I didn't know how to be in the world without her. — Sue Monk Kidd

By law, a slaw was three-fifths of a person. It came to me that what I'd just suggested would seem paramount to proclaiming vegetables equal to animals, animals equal to humans, women equal to men, men equal to angels. I was upending the order of creation. 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. — Sue Monk Kidd

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. — Sue Monk Kidd

Women who bear the weight of opposition, she wrote, create a shelter for the rest of us. — Sue Monk Kidd

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. — Sue Monk Kidd

She put up an invincible show, but underneath I knew her to be bruised and vulnerable. — Sue Monk Kidd

Lily Owens: If your favorite color is blue, why did you paint the house pink?
August Boatwright: [chuckles] That was May's doing. When we went to the paint shop, she latched on to a color called, "Caribbean Pink." She said it made her feel like dancing a Spanish Flamenco. I personally thought it was the tackiest color I had ever seen, but I figured if it could lift May's heart, it was good enough to live in.
Lily Owens: That was awfully nice of you.
August Boatwright: Well, I don't know. Some things in life, like the color of a house, don't really matter. But lifting someone's heart? Now, that matters. — Sue Monk Kidd

I was a Nancy Drew girl. Also Grimms' fairy tales. — Sue Monk Kidd

Miss Sarah never tattled. She tugged the rug over — Sue Monk Kidd

We are so limited, you have to use the same word for loving Rosaleen as you do for loving Coke with peanuts. Isn't that a shame we don't have many more ways to say it? — Sue Monk Kidd

I'm a big believer in the way ritual can put us in connection with our spirituality. — Sue Monk Kidd

I didn't know then what I wanted, but the ache for it was palpable. — Sue Monk Kidd

I felt like I'd unzipped my skin and momentarily stepped out of it, leaving a crazy person in charge — Sue Monk Kidd

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. — Sue Monk Kidd

I often went to Catholic mass or Eucharist at the Episcopal church, nourished by the symbol and power of this profound feeding ritual. It never occurred to me how odd it was that women, who have presided over the domain of food and feeding for thousands of years, were historically and routinely barred from presiding over it in a spiritual context. And when the priest held out the host and said, "This is my body, given for you," not once did I recognize that it is women in the act of breastfeeding who most truly embody those words and who are also most excluded from ritually saying them. — Sue Monk Kidd

of tea beside my plate, Phoebe deposited — Sue Monk Kidd

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. — Sue Monk Kidd

If you must err, do so on the side of audacity. — Sue Monk Kidd

There's no pain on earth that doesn't crave a benevolent witness. — Sue Monk Kidd

I have knots in my years that I can't undo, and this is one of the worst--the night I did wrong and Mauma got caught — Sue Monk Kidd

Drawing a breath, I flung myself across the door sill. That was the artless way I navigated the hurdles of girlhood. Everyone thought I was a plucky girl, but in truth, I wasn't as fearless as everyone assumed. I had the temperament of a tortoise. Whatever dread, fright, or bump appeared in my path, I wanted nothing more than to drop in my tracks and hide. If you must err, do so on the side of audacity. That was the little slogan I'd devised for myself. For some time now, it had helped me to hurl myself over door sills. — Sue Monk Kidd

Mother seemed happiest when making and tending home, the sewing machine whistling and the Mixmaster whirling. Her deepest impulse was to nurture, to simply dwell; it had nothing to do with ambition and achievement in the world ... How had I come to believe that my world of questing and writing was more valuable than her dwelling and domestic artistry? ... I wanted to go out and do things
write books, speak out. I've been driven by that. I don't know how to rest in myself very well, how to be content staying put. But Mother knows how to BE at home
and really, to be in herself. It's actually very beautiful what she does ... I think part of me just longs for the way Mother experiences home. — Sue Monk Kidd

The translucence that comes when life hardens into a bead of such cruel perfection you see it with the purest clarity. Everything suddenly there
life as it truly is, enormous, appalling, devastating. You see the great sinkholes it makes in people and the harrowing lengths to which love will go to fill them. — Sue Monk Kidd

In the photograph by my bed my mother is perpetually smiling on me. I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again. — 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? — Sue Monk Kidd

The only wrong thing, perhaps, is permanently hesitating on the verge of courage. — Sue Monk Kidd

My speech impediment had been absent for some time now - four months and six days. I'd almost imagined myself cured. So when Mother swept into the room all of a sudden - me, in a paroxysm of adjustment to my surroundings, and Binah, tucking my possessions here and there - and asked if my new quarters were to my liking, I was stunned by my inability to answer her. The door slammed in my throat, and the silence hung there. Mother looked at me and sighed. When she left, I willed my eyes to remain dry and turned away from Binah. I couldn't bear to hear one more Poor Miss Sarah. — Sue Monk Kidd

You are my everlasting home. Don't you ever be afraid. I am enough. We are enough. — Sue Monk Kidd

In a weird way I must have loved my little collection of hurts and wounds. They provided me with some real nice sympathy, with the feeling I was exceptional ... What a special case I was. — Sue Monk Kidd

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 — Sue Monk Kidd

In Radical Optimism, Beatrice Bruteau sets forth a deep and shining vision of spirituality, one that guides the reader into the contemplative life and the very root of our being. Dr. Bruteau is a philosopher of great measure whose work should be required reading for all who seek the deepest truth about themselves. — Sue Monk Kidd

Life is arranged against us, Sarah. And it's brutally worse for Handful and her mother and sister. We're all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren't we? I suspect God plants these yearnings in us so we'll at least try and change the course of things. We must try, that's all. — Sue Monk Kidd

I like to have a title before I start writing. — Sue Monk Kidd

He came to see, and I did too, that patriarchy wounds men also, that men have their own journeys to make in order to heal and differentiate themselves from it. — Sue Monk Kidd

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. — Sue Monk Kidd

I write in a journal occasionally. But it is not a daily discipline for me. — Sue Monk Kidd

Solitude is a time for "God and God alone." Who knows what can happpen when we focus only on God. In solitude, we sense our deep oneness with God and keep company with Him. Solitude is breaking through my isolation into sharing and being in touch with my Creator. In fact, we can begin to heal our loneliness by transforming it into solitude. — Sue Monk Kidd

It takes a bee 10,000,000 trips to collect enough nectar to make 1 pound of honey. — Sue Monk Kidd

The basic dynamics of conversion are summed up for me in the words LEAVE-ARRIVE, END-BEGIN, SHED-EMERGE. These are the tensions of conversion and spiritual awakening. — Sue Monk Kidd

The whole problem with people is they don't know what matters and what doesn't. — Sue Monk Kidd

Yes, here I am returning, the woman who bore herself to the bottom and back. Who wanted to swim like dolphins, leaping waves and diving. Who wanted only to belong to herself. — Sue Monk Kidd

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 . . . — Sue Monk Kidd

We had a citywide emergency on our hands, as there is no greater affliction for the southern mind than people up north coming down to fix our way of life. — Sue Monk Kidd

Just to be is holy, just to live is a gift. — Sue Monk Kidd

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

As I squatted on the grass at the edge of the woods, the pee felt hot between my legs. I watched in puddle in the dirt, the smell of it rising into the night. There was no difference between my piss and June's. That's what i thought when I looked at the dark circle on the ground. Piss is Piss. — Sue Monk Kidd

I realized that lacking the feminine, the language had communicated to me in subtle ways that women were nonentities, that women counted mostly as they related to men. — Sue Monk Kidd

God is at the tip of our scalpels, our screwdrivers, our computer terminals, our dust rags, our vacuum cleaners, our pencils and pens. He is with us in our wheelchairs, or on our hospital beds, when all we can do is sit or lie flat. When we envision Him and His purpose in what we do, then we begin to grow aware of His presence in the middle of it. We are able to engage in our inward conversation with Him as we work, naturally, without strain. He becomes our partner, our collaborator. — Sue Monk Kidd

Be careful, you can get enslaved twice, once in your body and once in your mind. — Sue Monk Kidd

Uhhh yea, just did. 30 years ago. You — Sue Monk Kidd

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. — Sue Monk Kidd

Thomas argued that if these strange animals were truly extinct, it implied poor planning on God's part, threatening the ideal of God's perfection, therefore, such creatures must still be alive in remote places on earth. I argued that even God should be allowed to change his mind. Why should God's perfection be based on having an unchanging — Sue Monk Kidd

couldn't have explained then how the oak tree lives inside the acorn or how I suddenly realized that in the same enigmatic way something lived inside of me - the woman I would become - but it seemed I knew at once who she was. — Sue Monk Kidd

I personally keep slave documents listing the value of slaves framed on my wall in California, and in my office in Chicago. — Sue Monk Kidd

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. — Sue Monk Kidd

Lovely, quite girl, no trouble, no trouble at all. You wouldn't even know she was in the house. That is often the yarn twisted around women's wrists. — Sue Monk Kidd

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. — Sue Monk Kidd

I have an affinity for writing in the first person. I love the intimacy of being dropped inside the character. — Sue Monk Kidd

I said, "Where's all that delivering God's supposed to do?"
He snorted. "You're right, the only deliverance is the one we get for ourselves. The Lord doesn't have any hands and feet but ours."
"That doesn't say much for the Lord."
"It doesn't say much for us, either. — Sue Monk Kidd

Depressed people do things they wouldn't ordinarily do. — Sue Monk Kidd

It has come as a great revelation to me," I wrote her, "that abolition is different from the desire for racial equality. Color prejudice is at the bottom of everything. If it's not fixed, the plight of the Negro will continue long after abolition. — Sue Monk Kidd

Why should God's perfection be based on having an unchanging nature?" I asked. "Isn't flexibility more perfect than stasis? — Sue Monk Kidd

Every writer has their rituals. For me, it's morning walks along the beach. And then, in my study I have a huge painting of the Black Madonna hung over my desk, and quite a few pictures of Mary around me for inspiration. — Sue Monk Kidd

I never know how to give advice to a writer because there's so much you could say, and it's hard to translate your own experience. But of course, I always try. The main thing that I usually end up saying is to read a lot. To read a great deal and to learn from that. — Sue Monk Kidd

To fashion an inner story of our pain carries us into the heart of it, which is where rebirth inevitably occurs. — Sue Monk Kidd

The mermaids came to me finally, in the pink hours of my life. They are my consolation. For them I dove with arms outstretched, my life streaming out behind me, a leap against all proprieties and expectations, but a leap that was somehow saving and necessary. How can I ever explain or account for that? I dove, and a pair of invisible arms simply appeared, unstinting arms, like the musculature of grace suddenly revealing itself. They caught me after I hit the water, bearing me not to the surface but to the bottom, and only then pulling me up. — Sue Monk Kidd

I want to tell you I'm strong and resolute, but in truth, I feel afraid and alone and uncertain. I feel as if he has died, and I suppose in some way it's true. I'm left with nothing but this strange beating in my heart that tells me I'm meant to do something in this world. I cannot apologize for it, or for loving this small beating as much as him. — Sue Monk Kidd

I gazed at Nina and Theodore standing now before the window about to say their vows, or as Nina had phrased it, whatever words their hearts gave them at the moment, and I thought it just as well Mother was not here. She would've expected Nina to be in ivory lace, perhaps blue linen, carrying roses or lilies, but Nina had dismissed all of that as unoriginal and embarked on a wedding designed to shock the masses. She was wearing a brown dress made from free-labor cotton with a broad white sash and white gloves, and she'd matched up Theodore in a brown coat, a white vest, and beige pantaloons. She clutched a handful of white rhododendrons cut fresh from the backyard, and I noticed she'd tucked a sprig in the button hole of Theodore's coat. Mother wouldn't have made it past the brown dress, much less the opening prayer, which had been delivered by a Negro minister. — Sue Monk Kidd

Did you know there are 32 names for love in one of the Eskimo language? And we just have this one. We are so limited, you have to use the same word for loving Rosaleen as you do for loving Coke with peanuts. Isn't that a shame we don't have more ways to say it. — Sue Monk Kidd

How did we ever get the idea that God would supply us on demand with quick fixes, that God is merely a rescuer and not a midwife? — Sue Monk Kidd

The idea of existing beyond the patriarchal institution of faith, of withdrawing our external projection of God onto the church is almost unfathomable ... We think there's nothing beyond the edge. No real spirituality, no salvation, no community, no divine substance. We cannot see that the voyage will lead us to whole new continents of depth and meaning. That if we keep going, we might even come full circle, but with a a whole new consciousness. — Sue Monk Kidd

Giving voice to marginalised characters is extremely important to me. I want to explore the pain of disenfranchisement, the social strata and boundaries we create and how to make them more permeable. — Sue Monk Kidd

The core symbols we use for God represent what we take to be the highest good ... These symbols or images shape our worldview, our ethical system, and our social practice
how we relate to one another.
For instance, [Elizabeth A.] Johnson suggests that if a religion speaks about God as warrior, using militaristic language such as how "he crushes his enemies" and summoning people to become soldiers in God's army, then the people tend to become militaristic and aggressive.
Likewise, if the key symbol of God is that of a male king (without any balancing feminine imagery), we become a culture that values and enthrones men and masculinity. — Sue Monk Kidd

I think many people need, even require, a narrative version of their life. I seem to be one of them. Writing memoir is, in some ways, a work of wholeness. — Sue Monk Kidd

It's easy to operate under the illusion that what we are doing is so important we cannot stop doing it ... Stopping is a spiritual act. It is the refuge where we drink life in. — Sue Monk Kidd

I've always been a journal-keeper. I've always tried to write about how I'm experiencing life, and my feelings and thoughts. — Sue Monk Kidd

And a true brass thimble. Mauma said the thimble would be mine one day. When she wasn't using it, I wore it on my fingertip like a jewel. — Sue Monk Kidd

I realize what a strange in-between place I am in. The Young Woman inside has turned to go, but the Old Woman has not shown up. — Sue Monk Kidd

At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin. I watched their wings shining like bits of chrome in the dark and felt the longing build in my chest. The way those bees flew, not even looking for a flower, just flying for the feel of the wind, split my heart down its seam. — Sue Monk Kidd

Handful was my basket name. — Sue Monk Kidd

He felt God the same way arthritic monks felt rain coming in their joints. He felt only a hint of him. — Sue Monk Kidd

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. — Sue Monk Kidd

I wondered what it was like to be inside her, just a curl of flesh swimming in the darkness, the quiet things that had passed between us. — Sue Monk Kidd

I watched him, filled with tenderness and ache, wondering what it was that connected us. Was it the wounded places down inside people that sought each other out, that bred a kind of love between them? — Sue Monk Kidd

She bent and put her arms around me. "Sarah darling, you've fought harder than I imagined, but you must give yourself over to your duty and your fate and make whatever happiness you can."O — Sue Monk Kidd

So few people know what they're capable of. — Sue Monk Kidd

I was wishing I had a story like that one to live inside me with so much loudness you could pick it up on a stethoscope. — Sue Monk Kidd

She'll outlive the last cockroach — Sue Monk Kidd

Sometimes I was so busy being tuned in to outside ideas, expectations, and demands, I failed to hear the unique music in my soul. I forfeited my ability to listen creatively to my deepest self, to my own God within. — Sue Monk Kidd

Anyone can retire into a quiet place, wrote Evelyn Underhill, but it's the shutting of the door that makes the difference. Solitude is a time for stripping away everything in order to focus on God. (Matt 6:6) — Sue Monk Kidd

Ms. came into practice, to give a woman an alternative to being recognized by her marital status, and thereby known as herself. How do I want to be known. — Sue Monk Kidd

I live in a hive of darkness, and you are my mother, I told her. You are the mother of thousands. — Sue Monk Kidd

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. — Sue Monk Kidd

Into every life a little rain must fall. — Sue Monk Kidd

Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now. — Sue Monk Kidd

I had begun to write novels because of a fierce, self-serving impulse in my own heart. I had not considered the potential in a book for felt communion, the bright largesse of intimately participating in the lives of other people. — Sue Monk Kidd

The redness had seeped from the day and night was arranging herself around us. Cooling things down, staining and dyeing the evening purple and blue black. — Sue Monk Kidd