Sue Monk Kidd Quotes

We justify ourselves when we should judge ourselves. If we learned humility, it might spare us the humiliation.

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'

Some people go to bed at night thinking, 'That was a good day.' I am one of those who worries and asks, 'How did I screw up today?'

My failures have made me look at myself in a way I've never wanted to before.

Basically, when I did 'Infinity' in 1997, I had thoughts in my head that left me with a lot of questions. I've gone to certain personal limits with 'Infinity' that, at the end of it, I think, scared me. And I've made a lot of really kinda bad mistakes as a result of that.

I've criticized myself over the years.

A conscience is a troublesome thing at times. I woke up at 4 o'clock this morning and I spent the time feeling what a nothing I was, and wishing I was so very different. Then the morning's post brought me a letter from a friend, saying I was so this, so that - it made me really cry, I was so grateful.

I feel it's important to point out that I've earned my humility by being a jackass - like, I trip and fall on my face and say, "Oh, right. Don't think you're a big shot, because you've got a bloody nose now." So it's hard to say.

I felt at some point that I had nothing to lose, and [laughs] maybe I was wrong. I think, you know, there's always these little autobiographical secrets behind things. I think I was really attacking my earlier self, and this kind of pretentious figure.

I'm not good," he said, piercing me with eyes that absorbed all light but reflected none, "but I was worse.

I showed myself a lesser version of myself that night, and I’m glad I learned from it.

It's more important to know your weaknesses than your strengths.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures - be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

I'm not sure whether I've been happy. After my last book tour, I sat on my balcony with a cup of tea. I thought: 'You can't rewind the movie. I've spent more than half my life in the Middle East. There have been great moments of horror and depression and loneliness.'

Half my life is an act of revision.

If I'd trusted myself and listened to myself all the times that I ignored myself, I would have been fine. But everyone has to learn their lesson, and now I've got it.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.

There were a couple of years where I got a bit lost - I went out too much, I was a bit heartbroken, thought I was a bit more of a dude than I really was. I would love to go back and have a strong word with myself.

Only when you're in that ditch, lying there in the muddy runoff you've made of your life, gazing up at the peak you fell from, do you truly know how small you are and understand how tall you used to be.

I would stay in my room for days, for days at times, just trying to get it together, to know what my next phase was going to be.

I'm usually very critical of myself.

I like to read my diary occasionally to remind myself what a miserable, alienated old sod I used to be.

I see myself capable of arrogance and brutality... That's a fierce thing, to discover within yourself that which you despise the most in others.

I don't know how to sit outside myself and test against a hypothetical self who stayed home.