"Someone who thinks death is the scariest thing doesn't know a thing about life."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"I hadn't been out to the hives before, so to start off she gave me a lesson in what she called 'bee yard etiquette'. She reminded me that the world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don't be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don't be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don't swat. Don't even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee's temper. Act like you know what you're doing, even if you don't. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved."
— Sue Monk Kidd

"...some things don't matter 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. 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."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"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."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"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 (The Secret Life of Bees)

"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 (The Secret Life of Bees)

"After you get stung, you can't get unstung
no matter how much you whine about it."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"The whole problem with people is--The problem is they KNOW what matters, but they don't CHOOSE it...The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"All my life I've thought I needed someone to complete me, now I know I need to belong to myself."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Mermaid Chair)

"Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"The world will give you that once in awhile, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"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."
— Sue Monk Kidd

"There is nothing perfect...only life."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It's that hard."
— Sue Monk Kidd

"At forty-two, I had never done anything that took my own breath away, and I suppose now that was part of the problem--my chronic inability to astonish myself. I promise you, no one judges me more harshly than I do myself; I caused a brilliant wreckage. Some say I fell from grace; they're being kind. I didn't fall. I dove."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Mermaid Chair)

"There's nothing like a song about lost love to remind you how everything precious can slip from the hinges where you've hung it so careful."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"Every human being on the face of the earth has a steel plate in his head, but if you lie down now and then and get still as you can, it will slide open like elevator doors, letting in all the secret thoughts that have been standing around so patiently, pushing the button for a ride to the top. The real troubles in life happen when those hidden doors stay closed for too long."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"Sunset is the saddest light there is."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don't even know it."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"I know you've run away - everybody gets the urge to do that some time - but sooner or later you'll want to go home."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"I wanted to know what happened when two people felt it. Would it divide the hurt in two, make it lighter to bear, the way feeling someone's joy seemed to double it?"
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do.
Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside...That's the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love - but to persist in love."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"You gotta imagine what's never been."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"You can tell which girls lack mothers by the look of their hair..."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"Actually, you can be bad at something...but if you love doing it, that will be enough. - August Boatwright"
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"There is nothing perfect. There is only life."
— Sue Monk Kidd

"I believe in the goodness of imagination."
— Sue Monk Kidd

"We walked into the night, into the blurring song of katydids, the thud-splat of raindrops on the umbrella, all those terrible rhythms that take up the inside when you let your guard down. Left you, they drummed. Left you. Left You.

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 (The Secret Life of Bees)

"I have noticed that if you look carefully at people's eyes the first five seconds they look at you, the truth of their feelings will shine through for just an instant before it flickers away."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"It was the first time I'd ever said the words to another person, and the sound of them broke open my heart."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"Honeybees depend not only on physical contact with the colony, but also require it's social companionship and support. Isolate a honeybee from her sisters and she will soon die."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"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."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine)

"Love is the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love -- but to persist in love."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"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 (The Secret Life of Bees)

"We can't think of changing our skin color. Change the world - that's how we gotta think."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"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 (The Mermaid Chair)

"If you aren't giving people something to talk about, you've become too dull."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Mermaid Chair)

"I'd heard August say more than once, "If you need something from somebody, always give that person a way to hand it to you." T. Ray needed a face-saving way to hand me over, and August was giving it to him."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"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 (The Secret Life of Bees)

"Loss takes up inside of everything sooner or later and eats right through it."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"With winter the feeling had deepened. I would see a neighbor running along the sidewalk in front of the house, training, I imagined, for a climb up Kilimanjaro. Or a friend at my book club giving a blow-by-blow of her bungee jump from a bridge in Australia. Or - and this was the worst of all - a TV show about some intrepid woman traveling alone in the blueness of Greece, and I'd be overcome by the little sparks that seemed to run beneath all that, the blood/sap/wine, aliveness, whatever it was. It had made me feel bereft over the immensity of the world, the extraordinary things people did with their lives - though, really, I didn't want to do any of those particular things. I didn't know then what I wanted, but the ache for it was palpable."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Mermaid Chair)

"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 (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."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Mermaid Chair)

"You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"...women made the best beekeepers 'cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"I didn't know then what I wanted, but the ache for it was palpable."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Mermaid Chair)

"The most significant gifts are the ones most easily overlooked. Small, everyday blessings: woods, health, music, laughter, memories, books, family, friends, second chances, warm fireplaces, and all the footprints scattered throughout our days."
— Sue Monk Kidd

"Sometimes I didn't even feel like getting out of bed. I took to wearing my days-of-the-week panties out of order. It could be Monday and I'd have on underwear saying Thursday. I just didn't care."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)