Anne Lamott Quotes

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“I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kind of things. Also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in the silence, in the dark.”

“If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.”

“I was reminded of the Four Immutable Laws of the Spirit: Whoever is present are the right people. Whenever it begins is the right time. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened. And when it's over, it's over.”

“Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.”

“Peace is joy at rest. Joy is peace on its feet.”

“Being enough was going to have to be an inside job.”

“[Her] work taught me that you could be all the traditional feminine things -- a mother, a lover, a listener, a nurturer -- and you could also be critically astute and radical and have a minority opinion that was profoundly moral.”

“Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all. Laugh, rest, slow down.”

“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.”

“Sam said to me the other day, "I love you like 20 tyrannosauruses on 20 mountaintops," and this is the exact same way in which I love him.”

“Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world's worst roommate.”

“Rule 1: When all else fails, follow instructions. And Rule 2: Don't be an asshole.”

“Trying to reason with an addict was like trying to blow out a lightbulb.”

“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.”

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

“Sometimes grace is a ribbon of mountain air that gets in through the cracks.”

“Jealousy has always been my cross, the weakness and woundedness in me that has most often caused me to feel ugly and unlovable, like the Bad Seed.”

“I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from.”

“one thing about having a baby is that each step of the way you simply cannot imagine loving him any more than you already do, because you are bursting with love, loving as much as you are humanly capable of- and then you do, you love him even more.”

“I’m probably just as good a mother as the next repressed, obsessive-compulsive paranoiac.”

“I think we're all pretty crazy on this bus. I'm not sure I know anyone who's got all the dots on his or her dice.”

“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.”

“Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence.”

“We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues.”

“Everybody thinks their opinion is the right one. If they didn't, they would get a new one.”

“I smiled back at her. I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.”

“There is nothing more touching to me then a family picture where everyone is trying to look his or her best, but you can see what a mess they all really are.”

“Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.”

“This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.”

“It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.”

“… one of the worst things about being a parent, for me, is the self-discovery, the being face to face with one's secret insanity and brokenness and rage.”

“Write as if your parents are dead.”

“If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've already been in.”

“One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline…. But also every single day a kid needs a break.”

“My friend Terry says that when you need to make a decision, in your work or otherwise, and you don’t know what to do, just do one thing or the other, because the worst that can happen is that you will have made a terrible mistake.”

“When you make friends with fear, it can’t rule you.”

“After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid.”

“It is a violation of trust to use your kids as caulking for the cracks in you.”

“There is ecstasy in paying attention.”

“And as it turns out, if one person is praying for you, buckle up. Things can happen.”

“These are the words I want on my gravestone: that I was a helper, and that I danced.”

“Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.”

“A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I'm not going to take anything away from you, you have to give it to Me.”

“Now she and I sit together in her room and eat chocolate, and I tell her that in a very long time when we both to go heaven, we should try to get chairs next to each other, close to the dessert table.”

“She felt as if the mosaic she had been assembling out of life's little shards got dumped to the ground, and there was no way to put it back together.”

“If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there… When nothing new can get in, that's death.”

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

“Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad.”

“Why couldn't Jesus command us to obsess over everything, to try to control and manipulate people, to try not to breathe at all, or to pay attention, stomp away to brood when people annoy us, and then eat a big bag of Hershey's Kisses in bed?”