The Invention of Wings

by Sue Monk Kidd

I’d say, “Let this cup pass from me,” spouting one of missus’ verses. I’d say, “Jesus wept cause he’s trapped in there with missus, like us.”

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

People say love gets fouled by a difference big as ours. I didn’t know for sure whether Miss Sarah’s feelings came from love or guilt. I didn’t know whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used her. It never was a simple thing. That day, our hearts were pure as they ever would get.

There’s no pain on earth that doesn’t crave a benevolent witness.

I saw then what I hadn’t seen before, that I was very good at despising slavery in the abstract, in the removed and anonymous masses, but in the concrete, intimate flesh of the girl beside me, I’d lost the ability to be repulsed by it. I’d grown comfortable with the particulars of evil. There’s a frightful muteness that dwells at the center of all unspeakable things, and I had found my way into it.

The sorry truth is you can walk your feet to blisters, walk till kingdom-come, and you never will outpace your grief.

He gazed at me with kindness and pity. “To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil.”