Sue Monk Kidd citations

“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.”

“We write to taste life twice," Anais Nin wrote, "in the moment and in retrospection.”

“If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you.”

“It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening.”

“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.”

“I have noticed that if you look carefully at people's eyes the first five seconds they look at you, the truth of their feelings will shine through for just an instant before it flickers away.”

“After you get stung, you can't get unstung
no matter how much you whine about it.”

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

“The most significant gifts are the ones most easily overlooked. Small, everyday blessings: woods, health, music, laughter, memories, books, family, friends, second chances, warm fireplaces, and all the footprints scattered throughout our days.”

“All my life I've thought I needed someone to complete me, now I know I need to belong to myself.”

“People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It'shard.”

“We are so limited, you have to use the same word for loving Rosaleen as you do for loving Coke with peanuts. Isn't that a shame we don't have many more ways to say it?”

“There is nothing perfect. There is only life.”

“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.”

“Sunset is the saddest light there is.”

“And when you get down to it, Lily, that is the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love but to persist in love.”

“You can go other places, all right - you can live on the other side of the world, but you can't ever leave home”

“There's nothing like a song about lost love to remind you how everything precious can slip from the hinges where you've hung it so careful.”

“Drifting off to sleep, I thought about her. How nobody is perfect. How you just have to close your eyes and breathe out and let the puzzle of the human heart be what it is.”

“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.”

“You gotta imagine what's never been.”

“The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.”

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

“I can't think of anything I'd rather have more than somebody lovin' me.”

“In a weird way I must have loved my little collection of hurts and wounds. They provided me with some real nice sympathy, with the feeling I was exceptional.”

“It shocks me how I wish for… what is lost and cannot come back.”

“History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.”

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

“I didn't know then what I wanted, but the ache for it was palpable.”