Anne Lamott: Quotes about life

“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.”

“It was not facing what life dealt that made you crazy, but rather trying to set life straight where it was unstraightenable.”

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.”

“You want to protect your child from pain, and what you get instead is life, and grace; and though theologians insist that grace is freely given, the truth is that sometimes you pay for it through the nose. And you can't pay your child's way.”

“… the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]”

“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.”

“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.”

“So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.”

“One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. Another secret is that laughter is carbonated holiness”

“.. I thought the secret of life was obvious: be here now, love as if your whole life depended on it, find your life's work, and try to get hold of a giant panda.”

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.”