Overall I really enjoyed this book. I know I've seen the movie but it had been long enough ago that I didn't remember the details of the story. I had trouble being interested in the beginning, but at about the halfway point I became invested and couldn't wait to continue. I think this story is beautiful and has a ton of valuable lessons we should all learn and commit to memory.
"We loved them [negroes] in the Lord, Brother Gerald said, but they had their own places."
"I couldn't help but envy the way a good storm got everyone's attention."
"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."
"You could not stop a bee from working if you tried. ... They are hard working to the point of killing themselves. Sometimes you want to say to them, 'Relax, take some time off, you deserve it.'"
"Did you know there are thirty-two names for love in one of the Eskimo languages? And we just have this one. We are so limited, you have to use the same word for loving [a person] as you do for loving a Coke with peanuts."
"When they looked at [the Black Madonna of Breznichar in Bohemia], it occurred to them for the first time in their lives that what's divine can come in dark skin. You see, everybody needs a God who looks like them."
"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."
"I decided against marrying altogether. There were enough restrictions in my life without someone expecting me to wait on him hand and foot. Not that I'm against marrying, I'm just against how it's set up."
"'Being in love and getting married, now, those are two different things. I was in love once, of course I was. Nobody should go through life without falling in love.'
"'But you didn't love him enough to marry him?'
"'I loved him enough, I just loved my freedom more.'"
"You think to much. It would do you a world of good to stop thinking and just go with your feelings once in a blue moon."
"Have you ever written a letter you knew you could never mail but you needed to write it anyway?"
"August turned [the news] off. 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 sung, you can't get unstung no matter how much you whine about it."
"Look, [God], I know you meant well creating the world and all, but how could you let it get away from you like this? How come you couldn't stick with your original idea of paradise? People's lives were a mess."
"The sort of look conjured from power without benefit of love."
"Was it the wounded places down inside people that sought each other out, that bred a kind of love between them?"
"It's something everybody wants - for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters."
"I felt somebody should personally thank every rock out there for the human misery it had absorbed. We should kiss them one by one and say, 'We are sorry, but something strong and lasting had to do this for May, and you are the chosen ones. God bless your rock hearts.'"
"[Her suicide] had been the thing they'd been waiting for half their lives without even realizing it."
"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."
"I could see the point in [imaginary friends]. How a lost part of yourself steps out and reminds you of who you could be with a little work."
"The music she played was the kind that sawed through you, cutting into the secret chambers of your heart and setting the sadness free. ... [The] music turned to air, and the air into aching. I swayed on my feet and tried not to breathe it in."
"People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It's that hard. If God said in plain language, "I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die," a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin."
"It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening."
