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Anne Lamott Quotes - Page 8

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

You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind.

You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind.

Space, Mind, Intuition

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

It is in many people's best interest for you not to find yourself, but it only matters that it is in yours, and the whole world's, to proceed.

People, Finding Yourself, World

Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. If you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare.

Forgiveness, Mean, Lunch

Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.47, Penguin

Maybe it's wishful thinking, this snaggly faith of mine, or maybe it's Miles Davis saying, Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

Thinking, Play, Miles

Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.222, Anchor

Being a parent is absolutely exhausting and draining, along with all the joy and love.

Joy, Parent, And Love

Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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.

Thinking, People, World

I love memoirs. They are probably my favorite literary form, along with biographies. The more confessional, the better. There is so, so, so little truth in the popular culture, and I am starved and grateful for any I can find.

Grateful, Culture, Littles

Toddlers can make you feel as if you have violated some archaic law in their personal Koran and you should die, infidel.

Law, Toddler, Should

Creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.

Mean, Writing, Creativity

"Time Lost and Found". www.sunset.com.

I'm here to be me, which is taking a great deal longer than I had hoped.

Deals

Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.288, Penguin

Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence.

Grief, Numbness, Next Day

Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.65, Anchor

Radical self-care is what we've been longing for, desperate for, our entire lives-friendship with our own hearts.

Heart, Compassion, Self

Once an old woman at my church said the secret is that God loves us exactly the way we are and that he loves us too much to let us stay like this, and I'm just trying to trust that.

Change, Secret, Church

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

No matter how people mess with you or let you down, or how you let yourself down, a good book means that when you get in bed that night, you have a good hour. I feel like you pay all day for that hour. That's what books mean to me. I can open this two-dimensional , flat white page with squiggly little black marks on them, and someone has created this world that you're going to enter into.

Book, Mean, Night

I liked those ladies! They were helpers, and they danced.' These are the words I want on my gravestone: that I was a helper, and that I danced.

Want, Gravestone, Helpers

Anne Lamott (2008). “Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith”, p.39, Penguin

Every time I see the bumper sticker that says “We think we’re humans having spiritual experiences, but we’re really spirits having human experiences,” I (a) think it’s true and (b) want to ram the car.

Spiritual, Thinking, Car

Anne Lamott (2014). “Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace”, p.74, Penguin

You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up when you're holding your breath. And writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like water - just as writing is also about dealing with the emptiness.

Running, Writing, Filling Up

We're all afraid of the same stuff. Mostly we're afraid that we're secretly not okay, that we're disgusting, or frauds, or about to be diagnosed with cancer. ... We want to teach you how to quiet the yammer ... how you can create comfort, inside and outside, how you can get warm, how you can feed yourself. And even learn to get through silence. ... There is a wilderness inside you, and a banquet. Both. [p. 253]

Cancer, Silence, Comfort

Try to write in a directly emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique. Don't be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.

Writing, Past, Emotional

Sometimes it takes failure to figure out who you aren't.

Sometimes, Figures, Who You Are

Peace is joy at rest. Joy is peace on its feet. quoting her pastor in Salon, April 25, 2003

Feet, Joy, April

The movement of grace toward gratitude brings us from the package of self-obsessed madness to a spiritual awakening.

Spiritual, Gratitude, Self

Anne Lamott (2012). “Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers”, p.22, Penguin

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.

Mean, Dark, Light

Do you mind even a little that you are still addicted to people-pleasing, and are still putting everyone else’s needs and laundry and career ahead of your creative, spiritual life? Giving all your life force away, to “help” and impress. Well, your help is not helpful, and falls short.

Spiritual, Fall, Careers

And yet, I do believe there is ultimately meaning in the chaos, and also in the doldrums. What I resist is not the truth but when people put a pretty bow on scary things instead of saying, 'This is a nightmare. I hate everything. I’m going to go hide in the garage.'

Hate, Believe, People

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