“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.”

—  Anne Lamott

Last update Feb. 22, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the …" by Anne Lamott?
Anne Lamott photo
Anne Lamott 146
Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist 1954

Related quotes

Anne Lamott photo

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

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

James Hudson Taylor photo

“Let us give up our work, our thoughts, our plans, ourselves, our lives, our loved ones, our influence, our all, right into His hand, and then, when we have given all over to Him, there will be nothing left for us to be troubled about, or to make trouble about.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(Hudson Taylor’s Choice Sayings: A Compilation from His Writings and Addresses. London: China Inland Mission, n.d., 52).
Variant: Let us give up our work, our thoughts, our plans, ourselves, our lives, our loved ones, our influence, our all, right into His hand, and then, when we have given all over to Him, there will be nothing left for us to be troubled about, or to make trouble about.

Robert Greene photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field(DOCID+@lit(tj110158)) Thomas Leiper (12 June 1815). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 11 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-11_Bk.pdf, pp. 477–478.
The sentence "I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be." was used by US-President Barack Obama in his A New Beginning Speech.
1810s
Context: We concur in considering the government of England as totally without morality, insolent beyond bearing, inflated with vanity and ambition, aiming at the exclusive dominion of the sea, lost in corruption, of deep-rooted hatred towards us, hostile to liberty wherever it endeavors to show its head, and the eternal disturber of the peace of the world. In our estimate of Bonaparte, I suspect we differ. [... ] Our form of government is odious to him, as a standing contrast between republican and despotic rule; and as much from that hatred, as from ignorance in political economy, he had excluded intercourse between us and his people, by prohibiting the only articles they wanted from us, that is, cotton and tobacco. Whether the war we have had with England, and the achievements of that war, and the hope that we may become his instruments and partisans against that enemy, may induce him, in future, to tolerate our commercial intercourse with his people, is still to be seen. For my part, I wish that all nations may recover and retain their independence; that those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe measures of power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among nations, and that our peace, commerce, and friendship, may be sought and cultivated by all. It is our business to manufacture for ourselves whatever we can, to keep our markets open for what we can spare or want; and the less we have to do with the amities or enmities of Europe, the better. Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.

Adolph Freiherr Knigge photo

“We see the wisest, most intelligent people take steps in life, that we must shake our head over.”

Wir sehen die klügsten, verständigsten Menschen im Leben Schritte tun, über die wir den Kopf schütteln müssen.
Über den Umgang mit Menschen (1788)

Julian of Norwich photo

“Our passing life that we have here in our sense-soul knoweth not what our Self is.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 46
Context: Our passing life that we have here in our sense-soul knoweth not what our Self is. Then shall we verily and clearly see and know our Lord God in fulness of joy. And therefore it behoveth needs to be that the nearer we be to our bliss, the more we shall long; and that both by nature and by grace. We may have knowing of our Self in this life by continuant help and virtue of our high Nature. In which knowing we may exercise and grow, by forwarding and speeding of mercy and grace; but we may never fully know our Self until the last point: in which point this passing life and manner of pain and woe shall have an end. And therefore it belongeth properly to us, both by nature and by grace, to long and desire with all our mights to know our Self in fulness of endless joy.

Azar Nafisi photo
Samuel Johnson photo
Ben Carson photo

“Responsible human beings must be concerned about our surroundings and what we will pass on to future generations. However, to use climate change as an excuse not to develop our God-given resources makes little sense.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

"CARSON: Expanding our energy resources serves peace" http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/25/carson-energys-role-in-the-path-to-peace/, The Washington Times (March 25, 2014)

Related topics