a motherless daughter

the secret life of bees by sue monk kidd

this little gem was one of my summer reads. now that i've finished it i can finally rent the movie and watch it. which is what initated my picking it up at half price books one afternoon.
i liked it a lot. very well written... i also read "while i was gone" by the same author. but, i think i prefer this to that.

favorite lines follow -

"but it's something everybody wants - for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters."

"people can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different."

"you think you want to know something, and then once you do, all you can think about is erasing it from your mind. from now on when people asked me what i wanted to be when i grew up, i planned to say, amnesiac."

"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. which one took the most strength to carry around? it was a ridiculous question, though, because 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."

"i knew then that no matter how hard you tried, no matter how many jars of honey you threw, no matter how much you thought you could leave your mother behind, she would never disappear from the tender places in you."

"august had said, 'i guess you need to grieve a little while. so go ahead and do it.' but now that i was doing it, i couldn't seem to stop."

"you have to find a mother inside yourself. we all do. even if you already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside."

wow. that was a good book.

note: watched the movie soon after and was impressed. all star cast did a wonderful job. not a lot of movies live up to the book. but, this one did for me.