Sue Monk Kidd: Timing

“When it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid.”

“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.”

“It's your time to live, don't mess it up.”

“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.”

“It was the first time I'd ever said the words to another person, and the sound of them broke open my heart.”

“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.”

“Now and then sprays of rain flew over and misted our faces. Every time I refused to wipe away the wetness. It made the world seem so alive to me. I couldn't help but envy the way a good storm got everyone's attention.”

“I'm tired of carrying around the weight of the world. I'm just going to lay it down now. It's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up.”

“People can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different.”

“It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I’ve never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.”

“I felt amazed at the choosing one had to do, over and over a million times daily--choosing love, then choosing it again… how loving and being in love could be so different.”

“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. ~Page 133.”

“Standing there, I loved myself and I hated myself. That's what the black Mary did to me, made me feel my glory and my shame at the same time.”

“There is a fullness of time for things. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet. When to let things take their course.”

“I didn't know what to think, but what I felt was magnetic and so big it ached like the moon had entered my chest and filled it up. The only thing I could compare it to was the feeling I got one time when I walked from the peach stand and saw the sun spreading across the late afternoon, setting the top of the orchard on fire while darkness collected underneath. Silence had hovered over my head, beauty multiplying in the air, the trees so transparent I felt like I could see through to something pure inside them. My chest ached then, too, this very same way.”