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Anne Lamott Quotes - Page 21

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

Being on a book tour is like being on the seesaw when you're a little kid. The excitement is in having someone to play with, and in rising up in the air, but then you're at the mercy of those holding you down, and if

Being on a book tour is like being on the seesaw when you're a little kid. The excitement is in having someone to play with, and in rising up in the air, but then you're at the mercy of those holding you down, and if it's your older brother, or Paul Wolfowitz, they leap up, so that you crash down and get hurt.

Hurt, Brother, Book

This is the Easter message, that awakening is possible, to the goodness of God, the sacredness of human life, the sisterhood and brotherhood of all.

Easter, Sisterhood, Brotherhood

My mother might find a thin gold chain at the back of a drawer, wadded into an impossibly tight knot, and give it to me to untangle. It would have a shiny, sweaty smell, and excite me: Gold chains linked you to the great fairy tales and myths, to Arabia, and India; to the great weight of the world, but lighter than a feather.

Mother, Smell, Giving

The clipping said forgiveness meant that God is for giving, and that we are here for giving too, and that to withold love or blessings is to be completely delusional.

Blessing, Giving, Delusional

Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.121, Anchor

Now she and I sit together in her room and eat chocolate, and I tell her that in a very long time when we both to go heaven, we should try to get chairs next to each other, close to the dessert table.

Long, Heaven, Chocolate

Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.133, Anchor

The earth is rocky and full of roots; it's clay, and it seems doomed and polluted, but you dig little holes for the ugly shriveled bulbs, throw in a handful of poppy seeds, and cover it all over, and you know you'll never see it again - it's death and clay and shrivel, and your hands are nicked from the rocks, your nails black with soil.

Rocks, Hands, Roots

The Giants are usually described as rag tag, kind of a great garage sale team, and the Democrats are described as the Mommies to the Republican Daddies; and everyone hates the mommies, but wait, wait - I didn't intend to get into the pathos and thrill of being a Democratic Giants fan.

Hate, Team, Daddy

Quiet, deep breath after any prayer is another form of Amen.

Prayer, Quiet, Form

Alice Adams wrote a sweet note to me after my first novel came out when I was 26, and I was so blown away that I sent her a bunch of stamps by return mail. I have no idea what I was thinking. It was a star-struck impulse.

Sweet, Stars, Thinking

You have to be a warrior and say, "Maybe it's everyone else's system, but it's not mine." (from her recent interview here, on Goodreads)

Warrior, Interviews, Goodreads

Goodreads Interview, www.goodreads.com. March, 2012.

E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.

Book, Reading, Minutes

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.

Writing, Dear Lord, People

"'Like a puppy in a Christmas stocking'". Interview With Susan Olasky, world.wng.org. September 20, 2003.

All these people keep waxing sentimental about how fabulously well I am doing as a mother, how competent I am, but I feel inside like when you're first learning to put nail polish on your right hand with your left. You can do it, but it doesn't look all that great around the cuticles.

Mother, Hands, People

Get to know your characters as well as you can let there be something at stake, and then let the chips fall where they may.

Fall, Character, May

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.45, Anchor

I did not raise my son, Sam, to celebrate Mother's Day. I didn't want him to feel some obligation to buy me pricey lunches or flowers, some annual display of gratitude that you have to grit your teeth and endure.

Mother, Gratitude, Flower

That thing you had to force yourself to do-the actual act of writing-turns out to be the best part.

Writing, Being The Best, Force

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.26, Anchor

I'm drawn to almost any piece of writing with the words 'divine love' and 'impeachment' in the first sentence. But I know the word 'divine' makes many progressive people run screaming for their cute little lives, and so one hesitates to use it.

Cute, Running, Writing

I used to love to untangle chains when I was a child. I had thin, busy fingers, and I never gave up. Perhaps there was a psychiatric component to my concentration but like much of my psychic damage, this worked to everyone's advantage.

Children, Psychics, Damage

Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.219, Penguin

Sometimes I think God loves the ones who most desperately ache and are most desperately lost - his or her wildest, most messed-up children - the way you'd ache and love a screwed-up rebel daughter in juvenile hall.

Daughter, Children, Thinking

I am all the ages I've ever been.

Age

Anne Lamott (2008). “Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith”, p.64, Penguin

I’m probably just as good a mother as the next repressed, obsessive-compulsive paranoiac.

Mother, Obsessive Compulsive, Next

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

The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion-not to look around and say, 'Look at yourselves, you idiots!,' but to say, 'This is who we are.

Mean, Writing, Dark

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.234, Anchor

Jealousy has always been my cross, the weakness and woundedness in me that has most often caused me to feel ugly and unlovable, like the Bad Seed.

Jealousy, Weakness, Ugly

Anne Lamott (2008). “Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith”, p.86, Penguin

When I was young, I used to be so jealous of other girls that it crippled me.

Girl, Jealous, Used

Anne Lamott (2008). “Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith”, p.86, Penguin

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.

Absurdity Of Life, Dancing, Laughing

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.237, Anchor

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