The Secret Life of Bees

by Sue Monk Kidd

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

That night I lay in bed and thought about dying and going to be with my mother in paradise. I would meet her saying, “Mother, forgive. Please forgive,” and she would kiss my skin till it grew chapped and tell me I was not to blame. She would tell me this for the first ten thousand years.

This is what I know about myself. She was all I wanted. And I took her away.

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.

You gotta imagine what’s never been,

That’s what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log thrown on the fires of love.

Quietness has a strange, spongy hum that can nearly break your eardrums.

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

All these mothers. I have more mothers than any eight girls off the street. They are the moons shining over me.