Quotes by Anne Lamott

When I asked Father Tom where we find God in this present darkness, he said that God is in creation, and to get outdoors as much as you can.

He is a writer. He makes the rest of them nervous.

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere. While others who have something to say or who want to be effectual, like musicians or baseball players or politicians, have to get out there in front of people, writers, who tend to be shy, get to stay home and still be public.

Toni Morrison said, The function of freedom is to free someone else, and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad that you did. Members of your family and other critics may wish you had kept your secrets. Oh, well, what are you going to do? Get it all down. Let it pour out of you and onto the page. Write an incredibly shitty, self-indulgent, whiny, mewling first draft. Then take out as many of the excesses as you can.

I like to think that Henry James said his classic line, A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost, while looking for his glasses, and that they were on top of his head.

Say to yourself in the kindest possible way, Look, honey, all were going to for now is to write a description of the river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the club, or the first time the man sees the woman he will marry. That is all we are going to do for now. We are just going to take this bird by bird. But we are going to finish this one short assignment.

A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. Its a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of the truth, and then you give your heart to expressing it clearly.

As a Christian and a feminist, the most important message I can carry and fight for is the sacredness of each human life, and reproductive rights for all women are a crucial part of that. It is a moral necessity that we not be forced to bring children into the world for whom we cannot be responsible and adoring and present. We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society.

It is unearned love--the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. Its the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. 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.

I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kind of things. Also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce graces arrival. But no, its clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in the silence, in the dark.

Grace means suddenly you’re in a different universe from the one where you were stuck, and there was absolutely no way for you to get there on your own.

grace is a small white butterfly, and life is a semi trailer careening up 101.

We stitch together quilts of meaning to keep us warm and safe, with whatever patches of beauty and utility we have on hand.

I know nothing, except what everyone knows--if there when grace dances, I should dance.

God cant clean the house of you when youre still in it.

If you dont believe in God, it may help to remember this great line of Geneen Roths: that awareness is learning to keep yourself company. And then learn to be more compassionate company, as if you were somebody you are fond of and wish to encourage. I doubt that you would read a close friends early efforts and, in his or her presence, roll your eyes and snicker. I doubt that you would pantomime sticking your finger down your throat. I think you might say something along the lines of, Good for you. We can work out some of the problems later, but for now, full steam ahead!

Lies cannot nourish or protect you. Only freedom from fear, freedom from lies, can make us beautiful, and keep us safe.

Its so awful, attacking your child. Its the worse thing I know, to shout loudly at this 50 lb. being with his huge trusting brown eyes. Its like bitch-slapping E.T.

It is a violation of trust to use your kids as caulking for the cracks in you.

Youve got to learn to let go and let your children fall, and fail. If you try to protect them from hurt, and always rush to their side with Band-Aids, they wont learn about life, and what is true, what works, what helps, and what are real consequences of certain kinds of behavior. When they do get hurt, which they will, they wont know how to take care of their grown selves. They wont even know where the aspirin is kept.