Anne Lamott Quotes

...most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of the people around you.

You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

Laughter is carbonated holiness.

The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines.

Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?

I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer. Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.

Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper.

The problem is acceptance, which is something we're taught not to do. We're taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given- that you are not in a productive creative period- you free yourself to begin filling up again.

The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.

If your wife locks you out of the house, you don't have a problem with your door.

Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in.

I want people who write to crash or dive below the surface, where life is so cold and confusing and hard to see.

Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth.

Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right.

Writing like this is a little like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it.

For a life oriented to leisure is in the end a life oriented to death – the greatest leisure of all.

I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.

Hope is not about proving anything. It's about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us.

It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.

We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.

I'm all over the place, up and down, scattered, withdrawing, trying to find some elusive sense of serenity."
The world can't give that serenity. The world can't give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts."
I hate that."
I know. But the good news is that by the same token, the world can't take it away.

Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of humor or insider pathos or meaning. All of us can sing the same song, and there will still be four billion different renditions.

Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.

I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling to the need to be right.

Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.

When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.

I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.

Mine was a patchwork God, sewn together from bits of rag and ribbon, Eastern and Western, pagan and Hebrew, everything but the kitchen sink and Jesus.

Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.

Every Sunday I nudge Sam in her direction, and he walks to where she is sitting and hugs her. She smells him behind the ears, where he most smells like sweet unwashed new potatoes. This is in fact what I think God may smell like, a young child's slightly dirty neck.

It turned out this man worked for the Dalai Lama. And she said gently-that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born-and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.

We stitch together quilts of meaning to keep us warm and safe, with whatever patches of beauty and utility we have on hand.

She lived in fear of ifonic endings. (91)

For too long, and despite what people told me, I had fallen for what the culture said about beauty, youth, features, heights, weights, hair textures, upper arms.

He lost the great big outward thing, the good- looking package, and the real parts endured. They shine through like crazy, the brillian mind and humor, the depth of generosity, the intense blue yes, those beautiful hands.

I've given guys blow jobs just because I've run out of things to talk about.'
Oh, Rae. Who hasn't

When we did art with the kids, the demons would lie down.

I watched him carefully. He was making art because he has to, and because he's brave enough to try and make contact, right there on the edge of madness, where he dreams.

His art springs out of bubbling underground necessity, as if he's somehow dipping himself into the river that gave him life; he's making dream material visible.

...It really IS easier to experience spiritual connection when your life is in the process of coming apart.

Nothing can be delicious when you are holding your breath.

A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal.

That's what's so touching about weddings: Two people fall in love, and decide to see if their love might stand up over time, if there might be enough grace and forgiveness and memory lapses to help the whole shebang hang together.

Some people have a thick skin and you don't. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pain, but that is an appropriate response to this world.

Jesus is busy with his own stuff, and is not going to get involved in your little tug-of-war. Plus, don't forget, he has his own mother to deal with. She's all he can handle, as far as mothers go.

She slept deeply, but as usual, she did not dream. It had been months; none of them was dreaming anymore. [p. 227]

This kind of beauty softens you and expands you, which is good, but of course it makes you vulnerable to all sorts of horrible things, like, oh, feelings. And being in your body.

I do know the sorrow of being ordinary, and that much of our life is spent doing the crazy mental arithmetic of how, at any given moment, we might improve, or at least disguise or present our defects and screw-ups in either more charming or more intimidating ways.

There are really places in your heart that you don't know exist until you love a child.

Children should not have treacherous diseases or be afraid. This should be one rule we all agree on.

When you don't have enough or you run out, you feel in your core that the leak has begun and there will be no end to the leakage. And this makes you feel like a chump. Whereas having some money gives you the conviction that you're not naked in the howling wind, even though you basically are, existentially.

Mattie sat at the table, obsessing, orbiting around herself. She was sick of her worried, hostile mind. It would have killed her long before, she felt, if it hadn't needed the transportation.

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