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Sue Monk Kidd

Sue Monk Kidd Quotes

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Famous Sue Monk Kidd Quotes

“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.”

SometimesDreamMotherNightSadnessBedWake UpForgivingPhotographTake MeForgivenTake Me Back
Book:Of love and life: three novels selected and condensed by Reader's Digest
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“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.”

WayFeelsHeartShowsLyingNightFeltBitsSoundDarkRoomsWatchesWindFlowerWallMy HeartBedSkinsLongingWingsShiningCirclesFlyingCracksChestsSplitsBeesBedroomFlewChromePropellerBedroom Wall
Book:Of love and life: three novels selected and condensed by Reader's Digest
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“As long as people have been on this earth, the moon has been a mystery to us. Think about it. She is strong enough to pull the oceans, and when she dies away, she always comes back again. My mama used to tell me Our Lady lived on the moon and that I should dance when her face was bright and hibernate when it was dark.”

PeopleThinkingShouldLongHas BeensEnoughEarthFacesUsedDiesStrongDarkMysteryMoonOceanStrong EnoughMamaBack Again
Book:The Secret Life of Bees
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“Back in the autumn I had awakened to a growing darkness and cacophony, as if something in the depths were crying out. A whole chorus of voices. Orphaned voices. They seemed to speak for all the unlived parts of me, and they came with a force and dazzle that I couldn't contain. They seemed to explode the boundaries of my existence. I know now that they were the clamor of a new self struggling to be born.”

IfsKnowsSelfWholeSpeakForceVoiceBornExistenceDarknessStruggleGrowingCryDepthBoundariesAutumnAwakenedChorusClamorDazzleCacophonyNew Self
Book:When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions
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“My children have always existed at the deepest center of me, right there in the heart/hearth, but I struggled with the powerful demands of motherhood, chafing sometimes at the way they pulled me away from my separate life, not knowing how to balance them with my unwieldy need for solitude and creative expression.”

WayNeedsHeartChildrenSometimesPowerfulCreativeKnowingExpressionBalanceSolitudeDemandMotherhoodMy ChildrenNot KnowingCreative ExpressionSeparate LivesChafing
Book:Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother and Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey, and France
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“In recent years my understanding of God had evolved into increasingly remote abstractions. I'd come to think of God in terms like Divine Reality, the Absolute, or the One who holds us in being. I do believe that God is beyond any form and image, but it has grown clear to me that I need an image in order to relate. I need an image in order to carry on an intimate conversation with what is so vast, amorphous, mysterious, and holy that it becomes ungraspable. I mean, really, how to you become intimate with Divine Reality? Or the Absolute?”

ThinkingNeedsYearsBelieveMeanRealityFormOrderUnderstandingTermClearDivineHolyConversationAbsolutesMysteriousRelateIntimateAbstractionIntimate Conversation
Book:Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother and Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey, and France
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“Finally, I began to write about becoming an older woman and the trepidation it stirred. The small, telling "betrayals" of my body. The stalled, eerie stillness in my writing, accompanied by an ache for some unlived destiny. I wrote about the raw, unsettled feelings coursing through me, the need to divest and relocate, the urge to radically simplify and distill life into a new, unknown meaning.”

NeedsWritingFeelingsBodyDestinyBecomingBetrayalUrgesStillnessAcheSimplifyOlder WomenEerieTrepidation
Book:Travelling with Pomegranates
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“Grandmotherhood initiated me into a world of play, where all things became fresh, alive, and honest again through my grandchildren's eyes. Mostly, it retaught me love.”

WorldPlayEyeAliveHonestAll ThingsGrandmotherGrandchildrenGrandmaMy Grandchildren
Book:Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother and Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey, and France
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“Where do you come from?"...This is the number one most-asked question in all of South Carolina. We want to know if you are one of us, if your cousin knows our cousin, if your little sister went to school with our big brother, if you go to the same Baptist church as our ex-boss. We are looking for ways our stories fit together.”

IfsKnowsWayWantLittlesStoriesBigsSchoolTogetherChurchNumbersBrotherFitSouthBossExesCousinBaptistsCarolinaSouth CarolinaLittle SisterYour Cousin
Book:The Secret Life of Bees
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“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.”

YearsSaidBodySpiritualGivenChurchMassCatholicProfoundSymbolsOddPriestsOver ItRitualHostFeedingDomainEucharistExcludedBreastfeeding
Author:Sue Monk Kidd
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“I didn't know what to think, but what I felt was magnetic and so big it ached like the moon had entered my chest and filled it up. The only think I could compare it to was the feeling I got one time when I walked from the peach stand and saw the sun spreading across the late afternoon, setting the top of the orchard on fire while darkness collected underneath. Silence had hovered over my head, beauty multiplying in the air, the trees so transparent I felt like I could see through to something pure inside them. My chest ached then, too, this very same way.”

ThinkingKnowsWayFeelingsBigsFeltSilenceDarknessSunFireSawsAirTreePureMoonLateFilledSettingSettingsCompareChestsAfternoonOne TimeTransparentMagneticPeachesOrchardMultiplyingLate Afternoon
Author:Sue Monk Kidd
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“How do we accomplish this matter of gathering life together in God? We must begin primarily by refocusing our attention keeping our minds and hearts directed toward God. The essence of the centered life is attention to God in all we think, say and do. It is the growing realization of His presence in our most down-to-earth living.”

ThinkingMindHeartMatterEarthTogetherLife IsAttentionGrowingEssenceAccomplishRealizationGatheringHeart And MindDown To EarthLife Together
Book:God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved
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“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.”

IfsSaidMomentsTogetherSongFeltKnowingGraceEmotionalEmbraceRoseProfoundBoxesWarmEncountersOverwhelmingButterflyPinsFrostBeing LovedUnified
Author:Sue Monk Kidd
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“This is the autumn of wonders, yet every day, every single day, I go back to that burned afternoon in August when T. Ray left. I go back to that one moment when I stood in the driveway with small rocks and clumps of dirt around my feet and looked back at the porch. And there they were. All these mothers. I have more mothers than any eight girls off the street. They are the moons shining over me.”

MomentsMotherGirlLeftWonderFeetStreetsRocksMoonShiningEightAutumnRaysAfternoonBurnedDirtAugustPorchDriveway
Author:Sue Monk Kidd
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“Every person on the face of the earth makes mistakes, Lily. Every last one. We're all so human. Your mother made a terrible mistake, but she tried to fix it.' 'Good night,' I said, and rolled onto my side. 'There is nothing perfect,' August said from the doorway. 'There is only life.”

HumansPersonsMadeSaidEarthLastsFacesMotherNightSidesPerfectMistakeTerribleMaking MistakesAugustLiliesDoorwaysGood Night
Book:The Secret Life of Bees
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