The Invention of Wings

by Sue Monk Kidd

If you must err, do so on the side of audacity.

longings had seized me, foreign, torrential aches that overran my heart. I wanted to know things, to become someone.

There was so much in the world to be had and not had.

He’d been places, and he was going places, and he set her alight with the notion she’d go places, too.

I’d been wandering about in the enchantments of romance, afflicted with the worst female curse on earth, the need to mold myself to expectations.

“To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil.”

She’d found her belonging.

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.

Be consoled in knowing the world depends upon the small beating in your heart.

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

I’d chosen the regret I could live with best, that’s all. I’d chosen the life I belonged to.

“The time to assert one’s right is when it’s denied!”

For a moment I felt the quiet hungering thing that comes inside when you return to the place of your origins, and then the ache of mis-belonging.