Quotes from book

The Secret Life of Bees

“My mother's life was way too heavy for me.”

“The whole problem with people is they don't know what matters and what doesn't.”

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

“the redness had seeped from the day and night was arranging herself around us. Cooling things down, staining and dyeing the evening purple and blue black.”

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

“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.”

“It takes a bee 10,000,000 trips to collect enough nectar to make 1 pound of honey.”

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

“Nothing is fair in this world. You might as well get that straight right now”

“Sometimes I didn't even feel like getting out of bed. I took to wearing my days-of-the-week panties out of order. It could be Monday and I'd have on underwear saying Thursday. I just didn't care.”

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

“Honeybees depend not only on physical contact with the colony, but also require it's social companionship and support. Isolate a honeybee from her sisters and she will soon die.”

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

“I wanted to know what happened when two people felt it. Would it divide the hurt in two, make it lighter to bear, the way feeling someone's joy seemed to double it?”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Everybody needs a seashell in her bathroom to remind her the ocean is her 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.”