Anne Lamott Quotes

...most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of the people around 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.

Laughter is carbonated holiness.

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

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

I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer. 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.

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.

The problem is acceptance, which is something we're taught not to do. We're taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given- that you are not in a productive creative period- you free yourself to begin filling up again.

The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.

If your wife locks you out of the house, you don't have a problem with your door.

Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in.

I want people who write to crash or dive below the surface, where life is so cold and confusing and hard to see.

Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth.

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.

Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right.

Writing like this is a little like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it.

For a life oriented to leisure is in the end a life oriented to death – the greatest leisure of all.

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.

Hope is not about proving anything. It's about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us.

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