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81 " Everybody needs a seashell in her bathroom to remind her the ocean is her home. "
― Sue Monk Kidd , The Secret Life of Bees
82 " 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. "
83 " There is a fullness of time for things. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet. When to let things take their course. "
84 " It takes a bee 10,000,000 trips to collect enough nectar to make 1 pound of honey. "
85 " 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. "
86 " There was nothing I hated worse than clumps of whispering girls who got quiet when I passed. I started picking scabs off my body and, when I didn't have any, gnawing the flesh around my fingernails until I was a bleeding wreck. I worried so much about how I looked and whether I was doing things right, I felt half the time I was impersonating a girl instead of really being me. "
87 " Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved. "
88 " Where had I been that I didn't know about imaginary friends? I could see the point of it. How a lost part of yourself steps out and remind you who you could be with a little work. "
89 " Shitbucket, hellfire, damnation, and son of a mother bitch," said Rosaleen, laying into each word like it was sweet potatoes on her tongue. "
90 " 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. "
91 " Make the world better. Take the meanness out of people's hearts. "
92 " The whole problem with people is...they know what matters, but they don't choose it. "
93 " You are my everlasting home. Don't you ever be afraid. I am enough. We are enough. "
94 " I have noticed that if you look carefully at people’s eyes the first five seconds they look at you, the truth of their feelings will shine through for just an instant before it flickers away. "
95 " We lived for honey. We swallowed a spoonful in the morning to wake us up and one at night to put us to sleep. We took it with every meal to calm the mind, give us stamina, and prevent fatal disease. We swabbed ourselves in it to disinfect cuts or heal chapped lips. It went in our baths, our skin cream, our raspberry tea and biscuits. Nothing was safe from honey...honey was the ambrosia of the gods and the shampoo of the goddesses. "
96 " She liked to tell everyone that women make the best beekeepers, 'cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting. "
97 " ...women make the best beekeepers, 'cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting. It comes from years of loving children and husbands. "
98 " T. Ray said 'Who do you think you are? Julias Shakespeare?' The man sincerely thought that was Shakespeare's first name, and if you think I should have corrected him, you are ignorant about the art of survival. "
99 " The month of August had turned into a griddle where the days just lay there and sizzled. "
100 " I'd heard August say more than once, "If you need something from somebody, always give that person a way to hand it to you." T. Ray needed a face-saving way to hand me over, and August was giving it to him. "