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" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Time
Age
American
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" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
School
Tea
Hard
" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
God
True
Creation
" I never know how to give advice to a writer because there's so much you could say, and it's hard to translate your own experience. But of course, I always try. The main thing that I usually end up saying is to read a lot. To read a great deal and to learn from that. "
Sue Monk Kidd
End
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Great
" Gradually it occurred to me that we spend a great deal of life asleep and that dreams are little narratives, little stories. I thought, 'Who's choreographing this stuff?' "
Sue Monk Kidd
Life
Great
Little
" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Save
Win
Divine
" I don't go in search of ideas; I try to let them find me. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Try
Find
Go
" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Story
Hope
People
" '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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Story
Flying
Life
" 'Traveling with Pomegranates' is a very personal, very honest story about my relationship with my daughter and Ann's with her mother. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Story
Daughter
Relationship
" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Writing
Work
Think
" People who think dying is the worst thing don't know a thing about life. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Know
Worst
Life
" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Like
Love
Need
" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Out
Trying
Outside
" I have an old dog named Lily, and she's a black lab. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Lab
Lily
Black
" I have an affinity for writing in the first person. I love the intimacy of being dropped inside the character. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Inside
Character
Writing
" I think there must be a place inside of us where dreams go and wait their turn. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Dreams
Wait
Turn
" When I wrote 'The Secret Life of Bees,' I was writing about civil rights. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Civil Rights
Writing
Rights
" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Name
Door
Way
" I've always been a journal-keeper. I've always tried to write about how I'm experiencing life, and my feelings and thoughts. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Write
Always
Feelings
" I want to believe that while we may sometimes read in the misguided pursuit of preserving our separation, there is a greater impulse inside us that compels us to read in search of the common heart. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Search
Believe
Heart
" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
History
City
Honor
" I actually grew up in a house in which bees lived in one of the walls, and they lived there 18 years, in fact, so it wasn't a fleeting thing. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Lived
Fact
Years
" I do read a poem almost every morning. Unless I'm really, really late, I have to get my poem in. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Really
Almost
Poem
" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Writing
Think
Imagination
" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Soul
Opportunity
Empathy
" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Live
Started
Loved
" There's a gap somehow between empathy and activism. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of 'soul force' - something that emanates from a deep truth inside of us and empowers us to act. Once you identify your inner genius, you will be able to take action, whether it's writing a check or digging a well. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Empathy
King
Soul
" I think the word 'freedom' is beautiful, not so much in its phonics, but just in the power of the word itself. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Freedom
Think
Power
" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Wings
Done
Time
" 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. "
Sue Monk Kidd
Me
Try
You