Quotes from book
The Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd

The Secret Life of Bees is a book by author Sue Monk Kidd. Set in 1964, it is a coming-of-age story about loss and betrayal. It received critical acclaim and was a New York Times bestseller. It won the 2004 Book Sense Book of the Year Awards , and was nominated for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“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.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

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

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees (2002)

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“It's something everybody wants-for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“In the photograph by my bed my mother is perpetually smiling on me. I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“I'll write this all down for you," I said. "I'll put it in a story." I don't know if that's what he wanted to ask me, but it's something everybody wants--for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

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

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“I watched him, filled with tenderness and ache, wondering what it was that connected us. Was it the wounded places down inside people that sought each other out, that bred a kind of love between them?”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“I wished she'd been smart enough, or loving enough, to realize everybody has burdens that crush them, only they don't give up their children.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

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

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“You gotta imagine what's never been.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“women made the best beekeepers 'cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“And I was struck all at once how life was out there going through its regular courses, and I was suspended, waiting, caught in a terrible crevice between living my life and not living it.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees (2002)

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“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.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Variant: You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course.
Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“You don't have to place your hand on Mary's heart to get strength and consolation and rescue, and all the other things we need to get through life. You can place it right here on your own heart. Your own heart.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“Sunset is the saddest light there is.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“Loss takes up inside of everything sooner or later and eats right through it.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“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.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Similar authors

Sue Monk Kidd photo
Sue Monk Kidd100
Novelist 1948
Henri Barbusse photo
Henri Barbusse197
French novelist None
Erich Maria Remarque photo
Erich Maria Remarque63
German novelist None
John Galsworthy photo
John Galsworthy48
English novelist and playwright None
Christopher Morley photo
Christopher Morley30
American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet None
João Guimarães Rosa photo
João Guimarães Rosa1
Brazilian novelist None
Marcel Proust photo
Marcel Proust41
French novelist, critic, and essayist None
Cesare Pavese photo
Cesare Pavese137
Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator None
Mario Benedetti photo
Mario Benedetti4
Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet None
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald411
American novelist and screenwriter None