Anne Lamott citations

Page 5

“Some people have a thick skin and you don't. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pain, but that is an appropriate response to this world.”

“When we did art with the kids, the demons would lie down.”

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.”

“Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.”

“Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.”

“… [T]here should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.”

“It feels like I'm babysitting in the Twilight Zone. I keep waiting for the parents to show up because we are out of chips and diet cokes.”

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”

“Without using the word, everyone started forgiving each other again. Just like that, from the no of all nothingness: you have a big tense mess and out of it comes some joy. It must be magic.”

“Anne Lamott’s priest friend Tom, how to get through:
"Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe," he said. "Right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe."
Salon April 25, 2003”

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.”

“Mattie sat at the table, obsessing, orbiting around herself. She was sick of her worried, hostile mind. It would have killed her long before, she felt, if it hadn't needed the transportation.”

“But it was the singing that pulled me in and split me wide open.”

“I cry intermittently, like a summer rain. I don't feel racked by the crying; in fact, it hydrates me. Then rage wells up in me, and I want to take a crowbar to all the cars in the neighborhood.”

“If we can believe in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, old Uncle Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth can destroy you.”

“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.”

“You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself.”

“Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”

“For twenty years I have ached to go back home, when there was nobody there to whom I could return.”

“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”

“When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader.”

“.. 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.”

“100 years from now? All new people.”

“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.”