T. S. Monk Quotes

What matters is giving over to what you love.

The world depends upon the small beating in your 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.

I could even feel how perishable all my moments really were, how all my life they had come to me begging to be lived, to be cherished even.

You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course.

Into every life a little rain must fall.

She didn't even know how dangerous the truth could be, all the tiny, shattering seeds it carried.

Drifting off to sleep, I thought about her. How nobody is perfect. How you just have to close your eyes and breathe out and let the puzzle of the human heart be what it is.

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

Sometimes you want to fall on your knees and thank God in heaven for all the poor news reporting that goes on in the world.

Were all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren't we? I suspect God plants these yearnings in us so we'll at least try and change the course of things. We must try, that's all.

We have to acknowledge sometimes that this moment is enough. This place is enough. I am enough.

In a way, humans are not made of skin and bones as such, as we're made of stories.

Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier.

I wished she'd been smart enough, or loving enough, to realize everybody has burdens that crush them, only they don't give up their children.

Standing there, I loved myself and I hated myself. That's what the black Mary did to me, made me feel my glory and my shame at the same time.

I said, "If I was a Negro girl-" He placed his fingers across my lips so I tasted his saltiness. "We can't think of changing our skin," he said. "Change the world-that's how we gotta think."

Have you ever written a letter you knew you could never mail but you needed to write it anyway?

the redness had seeped from the day and night was arranging herself around us. Cooling things down, staining and dyeing the evening purple and blue black.

I wondered what it was like to be inside her, just a curl of flesh swimming in the darkness, the quiet things that had passed between us.

I realize what a strange in-between place I am in. The Young Woman inside has turned to go, but the Old Woman has not shown up.

I felt amazed at the choosing one had to do, over and over a million times daily--choosing love, then choosing it again...how loving and being in love could be so different.

The only wrong thing, perhaps, is permanently hesitating on the verge of courage.

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

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.

It was the oldest sound there was. Souls flying away.

I vividly remember the summer of 1964 with its voter registration drives, boiling racial tensions, and the erupting awareness of the cruelty of racism. I was never the same after that summer.

You put his brain in a bird, the bird would fly backwards" -Secret Life of the Bees

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

We must err , do so on the side of audacity

I'd forgotten how that sort of craving felt, how it rose suddenly and loudly from the pit of my stomach like a flock of startle birds, then floated back down in the slow, beguiling way of feathers.

When had my fear of broken plates gotten so grandiose? My desire for extravagant moments so small?

Betrayal of any kind is hard, but betrayal by one's religion is excruciating. It makes you want to rage and weep.

You can tell which girls lack mothers by the look of their hair.

One day I will have to forgive life for ending, I tell myself. I will have to learn how to let life be life with its unbearable finality ... just be what it is.

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.

It was the first time I'd ever said the words to another person, and the sound of them broke open my heart.

I wanted to know what happened when two people felt it. Would it divide the hurt in two, make it lighter to bear, the way feeling someone's joy seemed to double it?

To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil.

This is what I know about myself. She was all I wanted. And I took her away.

Loss takes up inside of everything sooner or later and eats right through it.

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.

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.

Just to be is holy, just to live is a gift.

I didn't know then what I wanted, but the ache for it was palpable.

Elizabeth A. Johnson explains that including divine female symbols and images not only challenges the dominance of male images but also calls into question the structure of patriarchy itself.

When a woman starts to disentangle herself from patriarchy, ultimately she is abandoned to her own self.

Man, that cat [Ornette Coleman] is nuts.

All musicians are potential band leaders.

Everybody in all countries tries to play jazz.