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Anne Lamott Quotes - Page 4

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

If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there... When nothing new can get in, that's death.

If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there... When nothing new can get in, that's death.

Safe, Stuck, Dies

Anne Lamott (2013). “Wow: The Third Essential Prayer”, p.12, Hachette UK

In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.

Drinking, Waiting, Forgiving

Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.120, Anchor

Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

Life Is, Perfectionism, Clutter

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.28, Anchor

Joy is the best makeup.

Inspirational, Beauty, Makeup

Anne Lamott (2008). “Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith”, p.63, Penguin

It is unearned love--the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It's 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.

Grateful, Thinking, Light

Living on Earth has always been a dangerous way to spend your time.

Life, Earth, Way

Anne Lamott (1997). “Rosie: A Novel”, Penguin Books

You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t.

Mistake, Making Mistakes, Who You Are

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

Everybody thinks their opinion is the right one. If they didn't, they would get a new one.

Thinking, Opinion, Ifs

It helps to resign as the controller of your fate. All that energy we expend to keep things running right is not what's keeping things running right. We're bugs struggling in the river, brightly visible to the trout below. With that fact in mind, people like me make up all these rules to give us the illusion that we are in charge. I need to say to myself, they're not needed, hon. Just take in the buggy pleasures. Be kind to the others, grab the fleck of riverweed, notice how beautifully your bug legs scull.

Inspirational, Running, Struggle

I'm human, you're human, let me greet your humanness. Let's be people together for a while.

People, Together, Let Me

Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.188, Penguin

Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides.

Gratitude, Heart, Joy

"Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers". Book by Anne Lamott, www.pbs.org. 2012.

I have a terrible time during elections. I am way too politically involved. I absolutely never argue politics with anyone, as it makes me crazy and full of judgment and hostility. I have two very conservative friends, whom I cherish and would entrust my life to; we avoid politics like the plague. So in a certain way, it limits how completely we let ourselves know each other, but this is just the way it is and it is the best we can do. And I am secretly convinced that God is a progressive Democrat.

Crazy, Two, Way

The miracle is that we are here, that no matter how undone we’ve been the night before, we wake up every morning and are still here. It is phenomenal just to be.

Morning, Night, Miracle

"Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair". Book by Anne Lamott, 2013.

Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived...Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation... Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend. What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.

Children, True Friend, Mean

Love falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted. Love pulls people back to their feet. Bodies and souls are fed. Bones and lives heal. New blades of grass grow from charred soil. The sun rises.

Falling In Love, Feet, People

The problem is acceptance, which is something we're taught not to do. We're taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given- that you are not in a productive creative period- you free yourself to begin filling up again.

Acceptance, Reality, Uncomfortable Situations

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.178, Anchor

I don’t know why life isn’t constructed to be seamless and safe, why we make such glaring mistakes, things fall so short of our expectations, and our hearts get broken and out kids do scary things and our parents get old and don’t always remember to put pants on before they go out for a stroll. I don’t know why it’s not more like it is in the movies, why things don’t come out neatly and lessons can’t be learned when you’re in the mood for learning them, why love and grace often come in such motley packaging.

Mistake, Fall, Heart

I don't know much, but I understand how entirely doomed I am without God.

God, Doomed, Without God

...music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way.

Heart, Sound, Essentials

Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.60, Anchor

We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be.

Inspirational, Inspiration, Born

If you're lucky you find your way into a spiritual community and you start to find the great teachers of all the ages who said the same thing. There's only love, you're made of love.

Spiritual, Teacher, Love You

Source: www.pbs.org

I'm all over the place, up and down, scattered, withdrawing, trying to find some elusive sense of serenity." The world can't give that serenity. The world can't give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts." I hate that." I know. But the good news is that by the same token, the world can't take it away.

Hate, Heart, Giving

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

Praying, Turns, Buckles

Pay attention to the beauty surrounding you.

Attention, Pay, Pay Attention

To love yourself as you are is a miracle, and to seek yourself is to have found yourself for now. And now is all we have, and love is who we are.

Inspiring, Sexy, Love You

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