the mermaid chair

I just read The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd. A+

Favorite quotes

You can't stop your heart from loving, really--it's like standing out there in the ocean, yelling at the waves to stop.
*
When a person was in need of a cataclysmic change, of a whole new center of personality, for instance, his or her psyche would induce an infatuation, an erotic attachment, an intense falling in love. He knew this. Every analyst knew it. Falling in love was the oldest, most ruthless catalyst on earth.
*
We stood there staring at each other. I wondered if I would've fallen in love with him if he'd been a shoe salesman in Atlanta. It was a bizarre thought, but it seemed somehow the most sensible thought of my life. I doubted I would have, and it was disillusioning to me in the sense of stripping away the last remaining illusions. My falling in love with him had every thing to do with his monkness, his loyalty to what lay deep within him, the self-containment of his solitude, that desire to be transformed. What I'd loved in him most was my own aliveness, his ability to give me back to myself. It felt cruel and astonishing to realize that our relationship had never belonged out therein the world, in a real world where you wash socks and slice onions. It belonged in the shadowed linings of the soul. I had come to the irreducible thing, just as I had with my father, and there was nothing to do but accept, to learn to accept, to lie every night and accept.
*
You brought me deeper into life--how could I regret that?