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Anne Lamott Quotes - Page 9

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 confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. ... Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. ... Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

Inspirational Life, Feet, Intuition

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

All I ever wanted since I arrived here on earth are the same things I needed as a baby, to go from cold to warm, lonely to held, the vessel to the giver, empty to full.

Baby, Lonely, Earth

I had NO interest in being a theologian, especially not a Christian, as I had been raised by progressive atheists. We bowed down every morning to the golden calf of the New York Times, Noam Chomsky, Hannah Arendt. I tried to get my parents to respect and nourish me, let alone delight in me, so even though I secretly loved and believed in the Divine Something - Goodness, Good Orderly Direction, Gift of Desperation, the Cosmic Muffin - I wasn't ready yet to commit myself to the study of a higher power.

Christian, Morning, Atheist

Source: www.cosmopolitan.com

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, Light, Grace

...[T]here should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

Memories, Real, Feet

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

When we agree to being part of something bigger than our own wired, fixated minds, we are saved.

Mind, Bigger, Agree

Jealousy always has been my cross, the weakness and woundedness in me that has most often caused me to feel ugly and unlovable, like the Bad Seed. I’ve had many years of recovery and therapy, years filled with intimate and devoted friendships, yet I still struggle. I know that when someone gets a big slice of pie, it doesn’t mean there’s less for me. In fact, I know that there isn’t even a pie, that there’s plenty to go around, enough food and love and air. But I don’t believe it for a second. I secretly believe there’s a pie. I will go to my grave brandishing my fork.

Believe, Struggle, Recovery

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

This is a very violent place to live, the Earth, and we're a very violent species. Cain is still killing Abel. We see that every day.

Cain, Earth, Abel

Source: www.pbs.org

Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of humor or insider pathos or meaning. All of us can sing the same song, and there will still be four billion different renditions.

Song, Drama, Life Is Like

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.181, Anchor

Publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is.

Writing, Publication, Cracked

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

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.

Writing, Voice, Effort

On the spiritual path, all the dreck and misery is transformed, maybe not that same day, but still transformed into spiritual fuel or insight.

Spiritual, Fuel, Path

You have to keep taking the next necessary stitch, and the next one, and the next. Without stitches, you just have rags. And we are not rags.

Rags, Stitches, Next

I know that if I feel any deprivation or fear [about money], the solution is to give. The solution is to go find some mothers on the streets of San Raphael and give them tens and twenties and mail off another $50 to Doctors Without Borders to use for the refugees in Kosovo. Because I know that giving is the way we can feel abundant. Giving is the way that we fill ourselves up.... For me the way to fill up is through service and sharing and getting myself to give more than I feel comfortable giving.

Mother, Doctors, Giving

The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.

Opposites, Doubt, Doubt And Certainty

When you pray, you are not starting the conversation from scratch, just remembering to plug back into a conversation that's always in progress.

Progress, Scratches, Praying

Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.25, Penguin

There is nothing you can buy, achieve, own, or rent that can fill up that hunger inside for a sense of fulfillment and wonder.

Dream, Wonder, Hunger

I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kind of things. Also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in the silence, in the dark.

Healing, Dark, Silver Bells

Anne Lamott (2008). “Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith”, p.43, Penguin

You want to protect your child from pain, and what you get instead is life, and grace; and though theologians insist that grace is freely given, the truth is that sometimes you pay for it through the nose. And you can't pay your child's way.

Children, Pain, Grace

If you asked me, parents were supposed to affect the life of their child in such a way that the child grows up to be responsible, able to participate in life and in community.

Children, Growing Up, Community

Left to my own devices, would I trade this for firm thighs, fewer wrinkles, a better memory? On some days. That's why it's such a blessing I'm not left to my own devices. Because the truth is I have amazing friends and a deep faith in God, to whom I can turn. I have a cool kid, a sweet boyfriend, darling pets. I've learned to pay attention to life, and to listen. I'd give up all this for a flatter belly? Are you crazy?

Inspiring, Sweet, Giving Up

Little by little, in telling Sam all these details, I got to see the bigger point of baseball, that it can give us back ourselves. We’re a crowd animal, a highly gregarious, communicative species, but the culture and the age and all the fear that fills our days have put almost everyone into little boxes, each of us all alone. But baseball, if we love it, gives us back our place in the crowd. It restores us.

Baseball, Animal, Giving

I've known for years that resentments don't hurt the person we resent, but they do hurt us.

Hurt, Years, Resentment

Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.220, Penguin

Expectations are resentment waiting to happen.

Expectations, Waiting, Resentment

Anne Lamott (2011). “Crooked Little Heart: A Novel”, p.233, Anchor

I'm a terrible Christian and meditating is very hard for me, and I do it. I do it badly, like I do a lot of things. I believe in doing things badly.

Christian, Believe, Terrible

Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. April 6, 2010.

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