The Secret Life of Bees

by Sue Monk Kidd

People who think dying is the worst thing don’t know a thing about life.

You can tell which girls lack mothers by the look of their hair.

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.

I was the only one who knew that despite her sharp ways, her heart was more tender than a flower skin and she loved me beyond reason.

You know how adults love to ask, “So…what are you going to be when you grow up?” I can’t tell you how much I’d hated that question,

if you think I should have corrected him, you are ignorant about the art of survival.

Pious people have always gotten on my nerves.

Devoutly religious

“Shitbucket, hellfire, damnation, and son of a mother bitch,” said Rosaleen, laying into each word like it was sweet potatoes on her tongue.

According to Brother Gerald, hell was nothing but a bonfire for Catholics.

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.

daughters called workers. The workers cooperate in the food-gathering, nest-building and rearing the offspring. Males are reared only at the times of year when their presence is required.

🤭

I was practically radiating. 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.

The secret of a good lie is don’t overly explain, and throw in one good detail.

Let’s imagine for a moment that we are tiny enough to follow a bee into a hive. Usually the first thing we would have to get used to is the darkness…

The world will give you that once in a while, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.

Nobody should go through life without falling in love.” “But you didn’t love him enough to marry him?” She smiled at me. “I loved him enough,” she said. “I just loved my freedom more.”

Actually, you can be bad at something, Lily, but if you love doing it, that will be enough.”

It’s my time to die, and it’s your time to live. Don’t mess it up.

“We can’t think of changing our skin,” he said. “Change the world—that’s how we gotta think.”

There’s a fullness of time for things, Lily. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course. That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

“You know, Lily, people can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different.

You think you want to know something, and then once you do, all you can think about is erasing it from your mind.

“Depressed people do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do.”

“There is nothing perfect,” August said from the doorway. “There is only life.”

Have you noticed the more you try not to think, the more elaborate your thinking episodes get?

People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It’s that hard.

If God said in plain language, “I’m giving you a choice, forgive or die,” a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin.

My heart never stops talking.