Sue Monk Kidd Quotes

When compassion wakes up in us, we find ourselves more willing to become vulnerable, to take the risk of entering the pain of others.

Here is where our real selfhood is rooted, in the divine spark or seed, in the image of God imprinted on the human soul. The True Self is not our creation, but God’s. It is the self we are in our depths. It is our capacity for divinity and transcendence.

I came to believe that my true identity goes beyond the outer roles I play. It transcends the ego. I came to understand that there is an Authentic ‘I’ within – an ‘I Am,’ or divine spark within the soul.

I have an affinity for writing in the first person. I love the intimacy of being dropped inside the character.

I knew from reading about Sarah Grimke that she’d been given a handmaid to be her personal slave and that her name was Hetty. The only other fact I knew about her was that Sarah taught her to read: They conspired in a very subversive way, by locking the door and screening the keyhole.

The True Self is not our creation, but God’s. It is the self we are in our depths. It is our capacity for divinity and transcendence.

I think the word ‘freedom’ is beautiful, not so much in its phonics, but just in the power of the word itself.

I have a fondness for historical fiction, something wondrous like ‘Wolf Hall,’ but I’ll read most anything as long as the story grabs my mind or my heart, and preferably both. You would be hard pressed, however, to find science fiction on my shelves.

I first saw ‘The Dinner Party’ in 2007 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. While perusing the Heritage Panels, which honor 999 women who have made important contributions to Western history, I came upon the names of two sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke.

I’m always captivated by stories of women who find a way to be daring – misbehaving women.

We have to learn not to feel guilty about letting our imagination browse around, and you know, in writing fiction particularly. But I think, in any kind of writing, we have to learn to allow ourselves to approach it in a contemplative way.

Due to the sweeping time frame and the voices moving back and forth, the outline for ‘The Invention of Wings’ was the strangest one I’ve ever done. I created six large, separate outlines, one for each part of the book, and hung them around my study.

I’m a big believer in the way ritual can put us in connection with our spirituality.

I write in a journal occasionally. But it is not a daily discipline for me.

For me, writing a novel goes on for years, and the solitude goes on, too. It tends to swallow me at times. I know it’s a problem when my husband sends the dog in to retrieve me.

It’s always been my hope that I would write a story that would inspire and would connect with people in a way that would touch hearts.

I grew up in the American South and came of age in the 1960s, an incredibly turbulent time. It was as if the seams of American life were being ripped apart with riots and protests.

When I wrote ‘The Secret Life of Bees,’ I was writing about civil rights.

Gender and race got very entwined in the 19th century, as abolition broke out, and then women wanted the right to speak about it.

I think many people need, even require, a narrative version of their life. I seem to be one of them. Writing memoir is, in some ways, a work of wholeness.

Reading was a huge part of my life as a child – we were a family of storytellers.

I can’t explain exactly why it lives within me for so long and passionately. But race matters to me; racial equality matters to me, as does gender. There is something about these kinds of social injustices that go to the deep of me.

Stories are amazing and powerful because they can resonate with people depending on their needs and experiences and speak truths we need to hear in that moment in time.

Empathy is the most mysterious transaction that the human soul can have, and it’s accessible to all of us, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to identify, to plunge ourselves in a story where we see the world from the bottom up or through another’s eyes or heart.

I don’t go in search of ideas; I try to let them find me.

‘Traveling with Pomegranates’ is a very personal, very honest story about my relationship with my daughter and Ann’s with her mother.

Writing in the voice of an American slave felt like I was biting off something very large.

I sometimes start keeping a journal about the writing process itself. Particularly when I get the ideas, and I am trying to brood over the chaos phase. In writing a novel, you really have to brood over a lot of chaos of ideas and possibilities.

I learned a long time ago that some people would rather die than forgive. It’s a strange truth, but forgiveness is a painful and difficult process. It’s not something that happens overnight. It’s an evolution of the heart.

On weekends, I sit in a lounge chair on my balcony. I love to be outside when the weather’s right. I can stay there pretty much all day.

A lot of time you write out of some unconscious place. I try to trust what is coming and where it wants to take me.

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

I do read a poem almost every morning. Unless I’m really, really late, I have to get my poem in.

I eventually found that the soul is more than an immortal commodity to win and save. It is the repository of the inner divine, the truest part of us.

As an adolescent, I went to charm school, where I learned to pour tea and relate to boys, which, as I recall, meant giving them the pickle jar to unscrew, whether it was too hard for me or not.

Every writer has their rituals. For me, it’s morning walks along the beach. And then, in my study I have a huge painting of the Black Madonna hung over my desk, and quite a few pictures of Mary around me for inspiration.

With pencil, you can always erase.

I was a Nancy Drew girl. Also Grimms’ fairy tales.

I feel like we need to be aware of the ways we use and misuse religious dogma: whether it takes us deeper into love and inclusion or it separates us.

Unraveling external selves and coming home to our real identity is the true meaning of soul work.