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" All I knew about bees when I started to write 'The Secret Life of Bees' was that they can live in a wall of your house, and that they make this incredible thing that I loved. "

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" I want my words to open a portal through which the reader may leave the self, migrate to some other human sky and return 'disposed' to otherness. "

Sue Monk Kidd

Sky

Words

Human

" I've noticed that most people tend to go through life preserving their differences from others. "

Sue Monk Kidd

Others

Differences

" Novels attempt to render human experience; that's really all they are. They are meant to convey empathy for 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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 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. "

" I grew up in Georgia, in a small town in the southwest corner of Georgia, actually, called Sylvester. "

Sue Monk Kidd

Small

Corner

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

" When I wrote 'The Secret Life of Bees,' I was writing about civil rights. "

" Giving voice to marginalised characters is extremely important to me. I want to explore the pain of disenfranchisement, the social strata and boundaries we create and how to make them more permeable. "

" 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. "

" I was a very good nurse, but I burned out after eight years or so because it wasn't what I truly wanted to do. Writing is what I belong to. "

" I think books with spiritual themes simply point to the deeper mysteries of life - to what lies beyond us, to what's hidden inside of us, or perhaps to an understanding of what truly matters. "

" There are so many different things out there trying to hook our attention, we writers have to be very selective and make certain that it is coming from inside out, not outside in. "

" I've always been a journal-keeper. I've always tried to write about how I'm experiencing life, and my feelings and thoughts. "

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

" 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. "

Sue Monk Kidd

Race

Long

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I have an old dog named Lily, and she's a black lab. "

" I think there must be a place inside of us where dreams go and wait their turn. "

" 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. "

Sue Monk Kidd

Dog

Problem

" 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. "

Sue Monk Kidd

Beach

Morning

" 'The Secret Life of Bees' was my first novel, so I had no process. I was flying by the seat of my pants, as they say, trying to understand how I, as a novelist, would work with story. "

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