Anne Lamott Quotes (146 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Variant: You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.
Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison, and then waiting around for the rat to die.”

Anne Lamott

Traveling Mercies
Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

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

Anne Lamott

Source: Joe Jones

“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

Source: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

“You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town”

Anne Lamott

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”

Anne Lamott

Plan B

“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.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“No" is a complete sentence.”

Anne Lamott

“Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. If you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare…”

Anne Lamott

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“Expectations are resentments under construction.”

Anne Lamott

“My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.”

Anne Lamott

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“I am all the ages I've ever been.”

Anne Lamott

“Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back.”

Anne Lamott

“Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue”

Anne Lamott

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

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

Anne Lamott

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

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

Anne Lamott

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

“The difference between you and God is that God doesn't think He's you.”

Anne Lamott

“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.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“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.”

Anne Lamott

“You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable”

Anne Lamott

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

“… because when people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

“If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“I worry that Jesus drinks himself to sleep when he hears me talk like this.”

Anne Lamott

“If you have a body, you are entitled to the full range of feelings. It comes with the package.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

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

Anne Lamott

Source: Crooked Little Heart

“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.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“… since you can't heal your own sick mind with your own sick mind, I needed to consult somebody else's sick mind.”

Anne Lamott

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

Anne Lamott

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

“I liked those ladies! They were helpers, and they danced.' These are the words I want on my gravestone: that I was a helper, and that I danced.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

“Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting.”

Anne Lamott

“Sometimes grace works like water wings when you feel you are sinking.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

“The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it… I would discover that it hadn't washed me away.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

“My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“It's better to be kind than to be right.”

Anne Lamott

“Certainty is missing the point entirely.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“This is one thing they forget to mention in most child-rearing books, that at times you will just lose your mind. Period.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“Never compare your insides to everyone else's outsides.”

Anne Lamott

“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.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“[S]he believed that the Buddhists were right–that if you want, you will suffer; if you love, you will grieve. (68)”

Anne Lamott

Source: Crooked Little Heart

“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

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

Anne Lamott

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good at it.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“So how on earth can I bring a child into the world, knowing that such sorrow lies ahead, that it is such a large part of what it means to be human?
I'm not sure. That's my answer: I'm not sure.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

“The thing about light is that it really isn’t yours; it’s what you gather and shine back. And it gets more power from reflectiveness; if you sit still and take it in, it fills your cup, and then you can give it off yourself.”

Anne Lamott

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

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