The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

• People aren't meant to be overly bright in everything.
• There's nothing like a song about lost love to remind you how everything precious can slip from the hinges where you've hung it so careful.
• Loss takes up inside of everything sooner or later and eats right through it.
• There is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don't even know it.
• The secret of a good lie is don't overly explain, and throw in one good detail.
• Act like you know what you're doing, even if you don't.
• Every little thing wants to be loved.
• Nothing's fair in this world. You might as well get that straight right now.
• Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.
• You can never underestimate the power of cutthroat competition.
• What's wrong with living in a dream world? You have to wake up.
• Everybody needs a God who looks like them.
• Nobody should go through life without falling in love.
• The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.
• It seemed to me it would have been better if God had deleted skin pigment altogether.
• You think too much. It would do you a world of good to stop thinking and just go with your feelings once in a blue moon.
• Enough was enough. You cannot fix the whole world.
• You can be bad at something, but if you love doing it, that will be enough.
• After you get stung, you can't get unstung no matter how much you whine about it.
• Every human being on the face of the earth has a steel plate in his head, but if you lie down now and then and get still as you can, it will slide open like elevator doors, letting in all the secret thoughts that have been standing around so patiently, pushing the button for a ride to the top. The real troubles in life happen when those hidden doors stay closed for too long.
• It's something everybody wants--for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters.
• In life there are things you can't get over no matter how hard you try.
• There is nothing like a small joke at a vigil to help you relax.
• Death was nothing but a doorway.
• Life gives way into death, and then death turns around and gives way into life.
• I'd thought that white people and colored people getting along was the big aim, but after that I decided everybody being colorless together was a better plan.
• I'm tired of carrying around the weight of the world.
• When it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid.
• We can't think of changing our skin. Change the world--that's how we gotta think.
• You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course.
• People can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different.
• Depressed people do things they wouldn't ordinarily do.
• Once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.
• Every person on the face of the earth makes mistakes.
• There is nothing perfect. There is only life.
• You can't talk yourself out of anger. Either you are angry or you're not.
• It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening.
• Regrets don't help anything.
• Sometimes you just need to nurse something.
• If you need something from somebody, always give that person a way to hand it to you.
• A person shouldn't look too far down her nose at absurdities.

8/11/2008