Anne Lamott citations

Page 3

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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