Anne Lamott Quotes & Sayings

Good therapy helps. Good friends help. Pretending that we are doing better than we are doesn't. Shame doesn't. Being heard does. — Anne Lamott

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. — Anne Lamott

You can change the world with a hot bath, if you sink into it from a place of knowing that you are worth profound care, even when you're dirty and rattled. — Anne Lamott

You want to avoid at all costs drawing your characters on those that already exist in other works of fiction. You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should confirm what you've observed in the world. — Anne Lamott

Maybe, I thought, after a few months of sobriety, you could successfully smoke marijuana again, or maybe every anniversary you got to have one glass of a perfectly chilled California Chardonnay. — Anne Lamott

It's a great time to be alive. — Anne Lamott

If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act - truth is always subversive. — Anne Lamott

Our preacher Veronica said recently that this is life's nature: that lives and hearts get broken -- those of people we love, those of people we'll never meet. She said that the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that and that we who are more or less OK for now need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes. You sit with people, she said, you bring them juice and graham crackers. — Anne Lamott

Is it okay to be a tiny tiny bit tired of Caitlyn? Yes, was very brave but so far he's gone from man to mannequin, instead of man to woman. — Anne Lamott

Everything was coming together by coming apart ... It is the most difficult Zen practice to leave people to their destiny, even though it's painful - just loving them, and breathing with them, and distracting them in a sweet way, and laughing with them ... if something was not my problem, I probably did not have the solution. — Anne Lamott

When people don't have free access to books, then communities are like radios without batteries. — Anne Lamott

It's always the same old problem: how to find ourselves in the great yammering of ego and tragedy and discomfort and obsession with everyone else's destinies. — Anne Lamott

Pope Francis says the name of God is mercy. Our name was mercy, too, until we put it away to become more productive, more admired and less vulnerable. We tend to forget it's still there. — Anne Lamott

E. L. Doctorow once said that "writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard. — Anne Lamott

Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining. — Anne Lamott

Just take it bird by bird — Anne Lamott

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. — Anne Lamott

I am not writing to try and convert people to fundamental Christianity. I am just trying to share my experience, strength and hope, that someone who is as messed up and neurotic and scarred and scared can be fully accepted by our dear Lord, no questions asked. — Anne Lamott

I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. — Anne Lamott

Sometimes Heaven is just a new pair of glasses. — Anne Lamott

Any plot you impose on your characters will be onomatopoetic: PLOT. I say don't worry about plot. Worry about the characters. Let what they say or do reveal who they are, and be involved in their lives, and keep asking yourself, Now what happens? The development of relationship creates plot. — Anne Lamott

I honestly think in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here? Let's think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world. The alternative is that we stultify, we shut down. Think of those times when you've read prose or poetry that is presented in such a way that you have a fleeting sense of being startled by beauty or insight, by a glimpse into someone's soul. All of a sudden everything seems to fit together or at least to have some meaning for a moment. This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of
please forgive me
wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds. — Anne Lamott

Sin is not the adult bookstore on the corner. It is the hard heart, the lack of generosity, and all the isms, racism and sexism and so forth. But is there a crack where a ribbon of light might get in, might sneak past all the roadblocks and piles of stones, mental and emotional and cultural? We — Anne Lamott

They taught us that extending ourselves to others would help us stay sober and sane. But they also wanted us to extend ourselves to our own horrible selves, get ourselves a lovely cup of tea. It was and is the hardest work ever. — Anne Lamott

She said that sometimes she uses a formula when writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending. — Anne Lamott

I know that sometimes these friends feel that they have been expelled from the ordinary world they lived in before and that they are now citizens of the Land of the Fucked. — Anne Lamott

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

I write everything as a wake-up call to myself and others, to anyone who may have gotten tired of hitting the snooze button. — Anne Lamott

Dialogue that is written in dialect is very tiring to read. If you can do it brilliantly, fine. If other writers read your work and rave about your use of dialect, go for it. But be positive that you do it well, because otherwise it is a lot of work to read short stories or novels that are written in dialect. It makes our necks feel funny. — Anne Lamott

Is something a friend once told me. She said that every single one of us at birth is given an emotional acre all our own. You get one, your awful Uncle Phil gets one, I get one, Tricia Nixon gets one, everyone gets one. And as long as you don't hurt anyone, you really get to do with your acre as you please. You can plant fruit trees or flowers or alphabetized rows of vegetables, or nothing at all. If you want your acre to look like a giant garage sale, or an auto-wrecking yard, that's what you get to do with it. There's a fence around your acre, though, with a gate, and if people keep coming onto your land and sliming it or trying to get you to do what they think is right, you get to ask them to leave. And they have to go, because this is your acre. — Anne Lamott

butterflies were wind energy made visible. — Anne Lamott

If you are mesmerized by televised stupidity, and don't get to hear or read stories about your world, you can be fooled into thinking that the world isn't miraculous
and it is. — Anne Lamott

I spend most of my time alone, because I so value and thrive in the quiet. Heaven. — Anne Lamott

various people at her church kept saying that she could be happy because she was going home to be with Jesus. This is the sort of thing that gives Christians a bad name. This, and the Inquisition. Sue wanted to open fire on them all. I think I encouraged this. — Anne Lamott

I don't write about the intimate details of my cousins and aunts and uncles, and my mother and my father because it's not right to, for me. — Anne Lamott

This is a very violent place to live, the Earth, and we're a very violent species. Cain is still killing Abel. We see that every day. — Anne Lamott

The speaker at the meeting, a blonde woman in a fine tailored suit, shared how alcoholism had stolen her own childhood, and had now come back for her child. — Anne Lamott

What if Sam's heart got broken again? As with most kids who are fourteen, it has been spackled and duct-taped and caulked back together many times as it is. [p. 258] — Anne Lamott

We think we're humans having spiritual experiences, but we're really spirits having human experiences, — Anne Lamott

It's so great to be able to make people laugh, because this is so often how we get our selves back. — Anne Lamott

The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it ... I would discover that it hadn't washed me away. — Anne Lamott

And as it turns out, if one person is praying for you, buckle up. Things can happen. — Anne Lamott

I am going to notice the lights of the earth, the sun and the moon and the stars, the lights of our candles as we march, the lights with which spring teases us, the light that is already present. — Anne Lamott

A priest friend of mine has cautioned me away from the standard God of our childhoods, who loves you and guides you and then, if you are bad, roasts you: God as a high school principal in a gray suit who never remembered your name but is always leafing unhappily through your files. — Anne Lamott

In early sobriety I heard that if you have an idea after ten p.m., it is probably not a good idea - and this was before e-mail. — Anne Lamott

I was reminded of the Four Immutable Laws of the Spirit: Whoever is present are the right people. Whenever it begins is the right time. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened. And when it's over, it's over. — Anne Lamott

You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn't nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating. — Anne Lamott

But baseball, if we love it, gives us back our place in the crowd. It restores us. — Anne Lamott

Small is how blessings, healing, progress and increase occur. — Anne Lamott

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. — Anne Lamott

And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn't have to anymore. — Anne Lamott

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. — Anne Lamott

I think drugs are part of the magical possibilities of youth and I wouldn't be here if I had continued with it. — Anne Lamott

Jesus was soft on crime. He'd never have been elected anything. — Anne Lamott

About novel Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott.
Q: What does the title "Imperfect Birds" mean?
It's a line from a poem by Rumi. The line is "Each must enter the nest made by the other imperfect birds", and it's really about how these kind of scraggly, raggedy nests that are our lives are the sanctuary for other people to step into, and that if you want to see the divine, you really step into the absolute ordinary. When you're at your absolutely most lost and dejected ... where do you go? You go to the nests left by other imperfect birds, you find other people who've gone through it. You find the few people you can talk to about it.
from Writer's Digest May/June 2010 — Anne Lamott

In biblical times, they used to stone a few thirteen-year-olds with some regularity, which helped keep the others quiet and at home. The mothers were usually in the first row of stone throwers, and had to be restrained. — Anne Lamott

Rosie had to keep her room neat enough so James would not freak out, but not so neat that they could figure it all out, break the code, of who you truly were, what you were up to, your values, your truest parts ... you were layer upon layer of ideas and erasures and new ideas and soul and images. [p. 68] — Anne Lamott

My idea of absolute happiness is to be in bed on a rainy day, with my blankie, my cat, and my dog. — Anne Lamott

I could become like that dyslexic agnostic in the old joke - the one who lies in bed and tries to figure out if his dog exists. — Anne Lamott

This is all that restoration requires most of the time, that one person not give up. — Anne Lamott

How do you begin? The answer is simple: you decide to. — Anne Lamott

This is who I want to be in the world. This is who I think we are supposed to be, people who help call forth human beings from deep inside hopelessness. — Anne Lamott

I carry a secret sense of accomplishment around with me, like a radium pack implanted near my heart that now leaches a quiet sense of relief through my system. — Anne Lamott

Spring is sweet, the baby season; summer is the teenage season -- too much energy, too much growth and beauty and heat and late nights, none of them what they are cracked up to be. Fall is the older season, a more seasoned season. The weather surrounds you instead of beating down on you. — Anne Lamott

The real payoff is the writing itself, that a day when you have gotten your work done is a good day, that total dedication is the point. — Anne Lamott

I guess he'll have to figure out someday that he is supposed to have this dark side, that it is part of what it means to be human, to have the darkness just as much as the light- that in fact the dark parts make the light visible; without them, the light would disappear. But I guess he has to figure other stuff out first, like how to keep his neck from flopping all over the place and how to sit up. — Anne Lamott

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

You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart
your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born. — Anne Lamott

Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity. — Anne Lamott

Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don't worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent. — Anne Lamott

They kind of want to write, but they really want to be published. You'll never get to where you want to be that way, I tell them. — Anne Lamott

How are we going to get through this craziness?' I asked. There was silence for a moment.
'Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe,' he said. — Anne Lamott

It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos. — Anne Lamott

Left to my own devices, would I trade this for firm thighs, fewer wrinkles, a better memory? On some days. That's why it's such a blessing I'm not left to my own devices. Because the truth is I have amazing friends and a deep faith in God, to whom I can turn. I have a cool kid, a sweet boyfriend, darling pets. I've learned to pay attention to life, and to listen. I'd give up all this for a flatter belly? Are you crazy? — Anne Lamott

Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. — Anne Lamott

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. — Anne Lamott

He had the time to hear, like a person who believed there was someone alive beneath the rubble of herself, who heard the soft sounds she could still make from the broken parts that had waited decades to be missed. — Anne Lamott

Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong. It is no wonder if we sometimes tend to take ourselves perhaps a bit too seriously. — Anne Lamott

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it. — 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. — Anne Lamott

This business of having been issued a body is deeply confusing ... Bodies are so messy and disappointing. — Anne Lamott

I am skittish about relationships, as most of the marriages I've seen up close have been ruinous for one or both parties. — Anne Lamott

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. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship. — Anne Lamott

If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans. — Anne Lamott

Shirley Jackson said that a confused reader is an antagonistic reader, and I live by that. It's okay to start anywhere, and to let yourself write a big sloppy overly-detailed first draft. You just jump in, knowing that the water will be cold at first, but no one is making you swim. — Anne Lamott

Those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly and as privately as possible. But what I've discovered since is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal — Anne Lamott

My dad taught me that to be a writer is a decision and a habit. It's not anything lofty, and it doesn't have that much to do with inspiration. You have to develop the habit of being a certain way with yourself. You do it at the debt of honor. — Anne Lamott

I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good at it. — Anne Lamott

I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen. — Anne Lamott

It was not facing what life dealt that made you crazy, but rather trying to set life straight where it was unstraightenable. — Anne Lamott

What you're looking for is already inside you. You've heard this before, but the holy thing inside you really is that which causes you to seek it. You can't buy it, lease it, rent it, date it, or apply for it. The best job in the world can't give it to you. Neither can succes, or fame, or financial security - besides which, there ain't no such thing. — Anne Lamott

This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of
please forgive me
wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds. When this happens, everything feels more spacious. Try walking around with a child who's going, "Wow, wow! Look at that dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that red sky!" And the child points and you look, and you see, and you start going, "Wow! Look at that huge crazy hedge! Look at that teeny little baby! Look at the scary dark cloud!" I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world
present and in awe. — Anne Lamott

You should not bring more items and hurdles to the obstacle course. — Anne Lamott

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. — Anne Lamott

Once you know where true is, it defines everything else that has to happen. — Anne Lamott

You're instantly in a bind once you arrive here on earth, of need, self-will, a body and a separate personality, even before teh crippling self-consciousness kicks in, even before the seventh grade ... you're fucked at cell division ... it's all downhill from there. After that, it's all survival, and trying to keep yourself either entertained or convinced that the things you're obsessed with are of any importance at all in the big scheme. — Anne Lamott

It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said 'do the best you can with these, they will have to do'. And mostly, against all odds, they do. — Anne Lamott

On the spiritual path, all the dreck and misery is transformed, maybe not that same day, but still transformed into spiritual fuel or insight. — Anne Lamott

My understanding of incarnation is that we are not served by getting away from the grubbiness of suffering. Sometimes we feel that we are barely pulling ourselves forward through a tight tunnel on badly scraped-up elbows. But we do come out the other side, exhausted and changed. — Anne Lamott

I used to think that paired opposites were a given, that love was the opposite of hate, right the opposite of wrong. But now I think we sometimes buy into these concepts because it is so much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality. I don't think anything is the opposite of love. Reality is unforgivingly complex. — Anne Lamott