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" 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. "

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" In the early 1800s, religion was often used as a way to keep slavery in place. Slaves were forced to attend the church of their owners, listen to selective dogma that kept them obedient and subservient. "

Sue Monk Kidd

Place

Early

Church

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

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

" 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 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. "

" 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

" 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

" I got my Bachelor's degree in nursing and worked nine years - even taught nursing in a college - before I stopped and said to myself, 'This is not who I am. I am not really a nurse inside. I'm a writer.' "

" 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

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

Sue Monk Kidd

Others

Differences

" 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 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. "

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

Sue Monk Kidd

Small

Corner

" 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 prefer to read print books. Maybe I'm just a little old-school. I do read e-books. "

Sue Monk Kidd

Books

Read

" I had begun to write novels because of a fierce, self-serving impulse in my own heart. I had not considered the potential in a book for felt communion, the bright largesse of intimately participating in the lives of other people. "

" 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 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

Believe

Heart

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

" 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. "

Sue Monk Kidd

Try

You

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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