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Anne Lamott Quotes - Page 3

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

Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors.

Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors.

Prayer, Car, Church

Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.37, Penguin

Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all. Laugh, rest, slow down.

Spiritual, Laughter, Laughing

Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.308, Penguin

Nothing heals us like letting people know our scariest parts: When people listen to you cry and lament, and look at you with love, it's like they are holding the baby of you.

Baby, People, Looks

You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist. You can make the work a chore, or you can have a good time. You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself.

Artist, Finding Yourself, Tea

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

Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.

Prayer, Grief, Believe

Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.37, Penguin

You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself.

Badass, Mistake, Women

"Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be: Where to Start" by Anne Lamott, www.oprah.com.

I’ve heard it said that every day you need half an hour of quiet time for yourself, or your Self, unless you’re incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour. I promise you, it is there. Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.

Fighting, Self, Promise

"Borrowing Time for Bliss" by Christine Carter, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 13, 2010.

What’s the difference between you and God? God never thinks he’s you.

Prayer, Thinking, Light

"Help, Thanks, Wow". Book by Anne Lamott, June 20, 2013.

But you can’t get to any of these truths by sitting in a field smiling beatifically, avoiding your anger and damage and grief. Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don’t have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not go in to. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in – then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.

Grief, Home, Voice

My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.

Mind, Trying, Neighborhood

Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, "Well, that's pretty much what I thought I'd see," you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here. [...] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.

Expectations, Ponds, Attention

This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds.

Spiritual, Wind, Giving

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

Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.

Jobs, Book, Suffering

Anne Lamott (2013). “Help: The First Essential Prayer”, p.11, Hachette UK

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.

Reading, Writing, Soul

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

It turned out this man worked for the Dalai Lama. And she said gently-that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born-and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.

Buddhist, Believe, Men

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

Intelligence, goodness, humanity, excitement, serenity. Over time, these are the things that change the musculature of your face, as do laughter, and animation, and especially whatever peace you can broker with the person inside. It's furrow, pinch, and judgement that make us look older - our mothers were right. They said that if you made certain faces, they would stick, and they do. But our mothers forgot that faces of kindness and integrity stick as well.

Mother, Laughter, Kindness

"Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith". Book by Anne Lamott, 2007.

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.

Space, Giving, Intuition

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.112, Anchor

I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe over the last twenty-five years, that there's something to be said about keeping prayer simple. Help, Thanks, Wow.

Prayer, Believe, Simple

"Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers". Book by Anne Lamott, November 13, 2012.

People help you or you help them and when we offer or receive help, we take in each other. And then we are saved.

People, Helping, Offers

Twitter post from Aug 25, 2013

Most humbling of all is to comprehend the lifesaving gift that your pit crew of people has been for you, and all the experiences you have shared, the journeys together, the collaborations, births and deaths, divorces, rehab, and vacations, the solidarity you have shown one another. Every so often you realize that without all of them, your life would be barren and pathetic. It would be Death of a Salesman, though with e-mail and texting.

Divorce, Vacation, Journey

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do - the actual act of writing - turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

Writing, People, Giving

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

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

Obstacles, Should, Hurdle

Anne Lamott, Sam Lamott (2012). “Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son”, p.91, Penguin

butterflies were wind energy made visible.

Butterfly, Wind, Energy

Anne Lamott (2010). “Imperfect Birds: A Novel”, p.125, Penguin

A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I'm not going to take anything away from you, you have to give it to Me.

Prayer, Character, Years

E.L. Doctorow said 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 on writing, or life, I have ever heard.

Writing, Night, Two

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