Anne Lamott citations

“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”

“I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”

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

“We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be.”

“… the three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you.”

“Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank 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.”

“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.”

“You can either practice being right or practice being kind.”

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”

“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.”

“No" is a complete sentence.”

“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…”

“Expectations are resentments under construction.”

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

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

“I am all the ages I've ever been.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”