Top 40 Sue Monk Kidd Quotes

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?’

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

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 like to have a title before I start writing.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.