Anne Lamott citations

Page 4

“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.”

“I think that is why we stay close to our families, no matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or dull- because when people have seen you at your worst, you don’t have to put on the mask as much.”

“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.”

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

“For too long, and despite what people told me, I had fallen for what the culture said about beauty, youth, features, heights, weights, hair textures, upper arms.”

“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.”

“He told me about his monster. His sounded just like mine without quite so much mascara. When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are.”

“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?”

“To participate requires self-discipline and trust and courage, because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, as my friend Dale puts it, How alive am I willing to be?”