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Anne Lamott Quotes

All Quotes Acceptance Age Animation Anxiety Art Atheist Awakening Belief Caring Certainty Character Children Church Commitment Community Culture Dancing Discipline Doubt Drinking Earth Effort Energy Expectations Faith Fear Feelings Giving Giving Up God Goodness Grace Gratitude Grief Grieving Hardship Hate Healing Heart Heaven Home Hurt Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Intuition Jesus Joy Laughter Life Loss Lying Magic Makeup Mask Memories Morning Mountain Pain Parenting Past Perfectionism Prayer Progress Reading Reality Recovery Resentment Running Self Esteem Shame Silence Singing Son Soul Spring Struggle Students Suffering Sunday Tea Understanding Vision Waiting Water Worry Writing

Close friendships are one of life's miracles - that a few people get to know you deeply, all your messy or shadowy stuff along with the beauty and sweetness, and they still love you. Not only still love you, but love

Close friendships are one of life's miracles - that a few people get to know you deeply, all your messy or shadowy stuff along with the beauty and sweetness, and they still love you. Not only still love you, but love you more and more deeply. I would do anything for my closest friends, and they would do almost anything for me, and that is about as spiritual a truth as you can get.

Friendship, Spiritual, Love You

"Interview with Anne Lamott, Author of Help, Thanks, Wow". Interview with Jana Llewellyn, www.friendsjournal.org. January 30, 2013.

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

Inspirational, Wisdom, Autism

Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, Anchor

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

Minutes, Including, Ifs

"'Every Single Thing I Know, as of Today': Author Anne Lamott Shares Life Wisdom in Viral Facebook Post". www.today.com. April 10, 2015.

You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.

Hurt, Grief, Heart

Oh, my God. What if you wake up some day, and you're 65 or 75, and you never got your novel or memoir written; or you didn't go swimming in warm pools or oceans because your thighs were jiggly or you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It's going to break your heart. Don't let this happen.

Nice, Ocean, Kids

We are not here to see through one another, but to see one another through.

Cooperation

Anne Lamott (1994). “Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year”, Fawcett

It's better to be kind than to be right.

Be Kind, Kind

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

Running, Commitment, Acceptance

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.236, Anchor

Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, 'Well, isn't that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I'll figure out what we're going to do about your stuff.

God, Prayer, Water

Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.108, Anchor

Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

Faith, Light, Return

Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.257, Penguin

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.

Prayer, Honesty, Kids

Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.92, Anchor

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

Simple, Answers

Never compare your insides to everyone else's outsides.

Compare

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.

Relationship, Giving Up, Past

Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.

Creating, People, Trying

I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling to the need to be right.

Spiritual, Thinking, Light

"Growing into grace". Interview, www.washingtontimes.com. March 5, 2008.

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

Gratitude, Joy, Understanding

Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.295, Penguin

Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life - it gave me me. It provided the time and experience and failures and triumphs and friends who helped me step into the shape that had been waiting for me all my life...I not only get along with me most of the time now, I am militantly and maternally on my own side.

Waiting, Age, Triumph

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.

Inspiring, Hope, Giving Up

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.23, Anchor

... the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]

Nuts, Tribes, Reason

Dogs are the closest we come to knowing the divine love of God on this side of eternity.

Dog, Knowing, Sides

Hope begins in the dark.

Inspirational, Healing, Dark

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.23, Anchor

A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal.

Love, Marriage, People

Laughter is carbonated holiness.

Laughter, Humor, Grace

Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.66, Penguin

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. The cost is high, but the blessing of being compassionate is beyond your wildest dreams.

Dream, Pain, Heart

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