Anne Lamott quotes
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“The reason 'help' is such a great prayer is that God is the gift of desperation. When you're in despair, you're teachable.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Your unconscious can't work when you are breathing down its neck.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“This is a very violent place to live, the Earth, and we're a very violent species. Cain is still killing Abel. We see that every day.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“We're out there somewhere between the known and the unknown, trying to reel in both for a closer look.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Honesty is not necessarily interesting. I don't want to hear about your dreams or your acid trips, probably unless you make them really interesting.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”
-- Anne LamottSource : "'Every Single Thing I Know, as of Today': Author Anne Lamott Shares Life Wisdom in Viral Facebook Post". www.today.com. April 10, 2015.
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“It's intrusive for grandparents to think they're in charge. It's manipulative. Also, it's self-destructive, since if the parents have to resist you, you won't get your mitts on the kid as often.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“Dogs are the closest we come to knowing the divine love of God on this side of eternity.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“I'm one of those religious people who are afraid of everything. I'm instantly worried about everything that could go wrong.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist. You can make the work a chore, or you can have a good time. You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“I don't have any romantic views of parenting. Every step of the way it's really hard. It's a dangerous world, physically and psychologically.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.”
-- Anne LamottSource : Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.257, Penguin
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“No matter what circumstances, it's hard to be a parent and maintain a sense of self and identity in the world.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“And she is going to dance, dance hungry, dance full, dance each cold astonishing moment, now when she is young and again when she is old.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Drugs took me to places; they were like portals. It's kind of a cliché, but they were like portals to altered states of consciousness into ways of imagining the world, or seeing a world beyond this world, or seeing a world beyond this world that I might not have gotten to unless I discovered meditation and a very deep, intense spiritual path based on contemplation and meditation.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But, what I've discovered is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place, and that only grieving can heal grief. The passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“I believe in listening to what calls you from your heart and your spirit and if you do it badly, like learning to dance, you do it badly or you're going to kick yourself when you grow old and you meant to do it.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“It's incredibly touching when someone who seems so hopeless finds a few inches of light to stand in and makes everything work as well as possible. All of us lurch and fall, sit in the dirt, are helped to our feet, keep moving, feel like idiots, lose our balance, gain it, help others get back on their feet, and keep going.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“I'm a terrible Christian and meditating is very hard for me, and I do it. I do it badly, like I do a lot of things. I believe in doing things badly.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“I am drawn to people that are not going to shy away from the very dark, scary stuff of the human condition and in a lot of cases people need alcohol or drugs to create poetry and poetic pose that can take you so far out there where you are still able to recognize yourself and then to bring you back home where you're not the same person you were when you left.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“All parents are an embarrassment to their kids. Often, grandparents are the relief. Kids don't have to resist you.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Evangelical Christians and I can sit down and talk one on one about how much we love Jesus, and yet I'm not carried in Christian bookstores.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“Sometimes this human stuff is slimy and pathetic...but better to feel it and talk about it and walk through it than to spend a lifetime being silently poisoned.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Radical self-care is what we've been longing for, desperate for, our entire lives-friendship with our own hearts.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“My main problem is that over and over again, I try to get all my characters to say stuff that I think is so witty or erudite you know, so that everybody will go.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived...Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation... Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend. What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“My family tends to be pretty alcoholic and drug-addicted.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“I think drugs are part of the magical possibilities of youth and I wouldn't be here if I had continued with it.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“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.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“For me, being a writer is not an altered state. It's very ponderous, and very - it's like being a shoemaker.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Maybe it's wishful thinking, this snaggly faith of mine, or maybe it's Miles Davis saying, Don't play what's there, play what's not there.”
-- Anne LamottSource : "SPIN" Magazine, (p. 30), December 1990.
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“My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, "Well, that's pretty much what I thought I'd see," you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here. [...] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“The truth of my experience is that we are all a lot more alike than we are different.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“I've always understood that meditation had to be part of - or was part of the natural path and so I've always sort of dabbled in it.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“The miracle is that we are here, that no matter how undone we’ve been the night before, we wake up every morning and are still here. It is phenomenal just to be.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“Mostly what happens in the novels never happened in real life.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Age has given me the gift of me; it just gave me what I was always longing for, which was to get to be the woman I've already dreamt of being. Which is somebody who can do rest and do hard work and be a really constant companion, a constant, tender-hearted wife to myself.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“The difference between a writer who toughs it out and one who doesn't is that you push through the parts where you know that you've just written seven pages when all you're looking for is one paragraph.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“There is nothing you can buy, achieve, own, or rent that can fill up that hunger inside for a sense of fulfillment and wonder.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“My father really taught me that you really develop the habit of writing and you sit down at the same time every day, you don't wait for inspiration.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“... the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]”
-- Anne Lamott -
“My experience as a writer is that you really do write seven and eight pages to find the paragraph you were after all along.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Radical self-care is quantum, and radiates out into the atmosphere, like a little fresh air. It is a huge gift to the world. When people respond by saying, “Well, isn’t she full of herself,†smile obliquely, like Mona Lisa, and make both of you a nice cup of tea.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“In fact, there's really only one thing that everything's made of; it's energy.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“This business of having been issued a body is deeply confusing... Bodies are so messy and disappointing.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Do you mind even a little that you are still addicted to people-pleasing, and are still putting everyone else’s needs and laundry and career ahead of your creative, spiritual life? Giving all your life force away, to “help†and impress. Well, your help is not helpful, and falls short.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“If you're lucky you find your way into a spiritual community and you start to find the great teachers of all the ages who said the same thing. There's only love, you're made of love.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.”
-- Anne LamottSource : Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.295, Penguin
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“I'm not going to change the way people think about me, but I can say you know what? I'm not going to carry that in my backpack.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Pets are the world to me. I think they are the most obvious manifestations of divine love that we are going to see this side of eternity.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”
-- Anne LamottSource : Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, Anchor
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“I have a giant ego and terrible self-esteem, so I need to hit the re-set button fairly regularly - to get into presence, and humility, and being right-sized.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“People help you or you help them and when we offer or receive help, we take in each other. And then we are saved.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“I don't write about the intimate details of my cousins and aunts and uncles, and my mother and my father because it's not right to, for me.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said 'do the best you can with these, they will have to do'. And mostly, against all odds, they do.”
-- Anne LamottSource : Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.92, Anchor
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“I have been somebody who has not written a great deal about the truth of my family's life.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“If I have a huge audience, I'd like a bigger audience; maybe slightly a slightly more illustrious audience.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
-- Anne LamottSource : Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.22, Anchor
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“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.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Oh, my God. What if you wake up some day, and you're 65 or 75, and you never got your novel or memoir written; or you didn't go swimming in warm pools or oceans because your thighs were jiggly or you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It's going to break your heart. Don't let this happen.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“You can either practice being right or practice being kind.”
-- Anne LamottSource : Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.94, Penguin
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“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.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“If you have a body, you are entitled to the full range of feelings. It comes with the package.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“Love falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted. Love pulls people back to their feet. Bodies and souls are fed. Bones and lives heal. New blades of grass grow from charred soil. The sun rises.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“All I ever wanted since I arrived here on Earth were the things that turned out to be within reach. The same things I needed as a baby - to go from cold to warm, lonely to held, the vessel to the giver, empty to full. You can change the world with a hot bath, if you sink into it from a place of knowing that you are worth profound care, even when you're dirty and rattled. Who knew?”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Laughter is a bubbly, effervescent form of holiness”
-- Anne Lamott -
“My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Let’s think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world…Try walking around with a child who’s going, ‘Wow, wow! Look at that dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that red sky!’ And the child points, and you look, and you see, and you start going, ‘Wow! Look at that huge crazy hedge! Look at that teeny little baby! Look at the scary dark cloud!’ I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world – present and in awe.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“Getting into a new relationship is like pouring Miracle-Gro on your character defects.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days--listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off. You take home all you've taken in, all that you've overheard, and you turn it into gold. (Or at least you try.)”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“Some people wanted to get rich or famous, but my friends and I wanted to get real. We wanted to get deep. (Also, I suppose, we wanted to get laid.)”
-- Anne Lamott -
“You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn't nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“I get thirsty people glasses of water, even if that thirsty person is just me.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“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.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.”
-- Anne Lamott -
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“Small is how blessings, healing, progress and increase occur.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.”
-- Anne Lamott -
“You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town”
-- Anne Lamott -
“Expectations are resentments under construction.”
-- Anne LamottSource : Anne Lamott (2017). “Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy”, p.29, Penguin
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