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Anne Lamott Quotes about Children

All Anne Lamott Quotes Acceptance Age Animation Anxiety Art Atheist Awakening Belief Caring Certainty Character Children quotes 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 were loved because God loves, period. God loved you, and everyone, not because you believed in certain things, but because you were a mess, and lonely, and His or Her child. God loved you no matter how crazy you

You were loved because God loves, period. God loved you, and everyone, not because you believed in certain things, but because you were a mess, and lonely, and His or Her child. God loved you no matter how crazy you felt on the inside, no matter what a fake you were; always, even in your current condition, even before coffee. God loves you crazily, like I love you...like a slightly overweight auntie, who sees only your marvelousness and need.

Lonely, Children, Crazy

Anne Lamott (2010). “Imperfect Birds: A Novel”, p.17, Penguin

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

This is one thing they forget to mention in most child-rearing books, that at times you will just lose your mind. Period.

Children, Book, Mind

Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.96, Penguin

One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline.... But also every single day a kid needs a break.

Children, Kids, Parenting

I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.

Inspiring, Funny Inspirational, Children

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

Let’s think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world…Try walking around with a child who’s going, ‘Wow, wow! Look at that dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that red sky!’ And the child points, and you look, and you see, and you start going, ‘Wow! Look at that huge crazy hedge! Look at that teeny little baby! Look at the scary dark cloud!’ I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world – present and in awe.

Dog, Baby, Children

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

As a Christian and a feminist, the most important message I can carry and fight for is the sacredness of each human life, and reproductive rights for all women are a crucial part of that. It is a moral necessity that we not be forced to bring children into the world for whom we cannot be responsible and adoring and present. We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society.

Christian, Children, Fighting

Anne Lamott (2008). “Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith”, p.81, Penguin

We can't understand when we're pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here, on Earth, for a time - like the Egyptians with their pyramids, only with children.

Children, Sibling, Mean

Talking to the parents of older kids was helpful for me, since parents of kids the same age as yours won't admit how horrible their children are.

Children, Kids, Talking

Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.94, Penguin

No one tells you that your life is effectively over when you have a child: that you're never going to draw another complacent breath again... or that whatever level of hypochondria and rage you'd learned to repress and live with is going to seem like the good old days.

Children, Levels, Life Is

You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. ... You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file. ... You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. ... Then your mental illnesses arrive at the desk like your sickest, most secretive relatives. And they pull up chairs in a semicircle around the computer, and they try to be quiet but you know they are there with their weird coppery breath, leering at you behind your back.

Children, Typewriters, Trying

I see that children fill the existential hollowness many people feel; that when we have children, we know they will need us, and maybe love us, but we don't have a clue how hard it is going to be.

Children, People, Needs

These are pictures of the people in my family where we look like the most awkward and desperate folk you ever saw, poster children for the human condition.

Children, People, Awkward

Writing is how I communicate my deepest beliefs, and what I hope are helpful observations about our dual citizenship, as children of God, as regular old mixed-up, worried, flawed, precious human beings.

Children, Writing, Belief

"Interview with Anne Lamott, Author of Help, Thanks, Wow". Interview with Jana Llewellyn, www.friendsjournal.org. January 30, 2013.

Every woman's path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is, sadly, true. An unhealthy mother's love is withering.

Mother, Children, Love Is

The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later.

Children, Knowing, Shapes

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.22, Anchor

So how on earth can I bring a child into the world, knowing that such sorrow lies ahead, that it is such a large part of what it means to be human? I'm not sure. That's my answer: I'm not sure.

Children, Lying, Mean

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

We're like Magic 8-Balls. After you ask your question and shake the 8-Ball, you read the answer in the little window. If you ever broke open a Magic 8-Ball with a hammer, you discovered that it contained a many-sided plastic object, with an answer on every facet, floating in a cylinder of murky blue fluid. The many-sided core held the answer to your question. My theory is that, as with our children, as with every surface of that geodesic dome inside the 8-Ball, every age we've ever been is who we are.

Children, Blue, Magic

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

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, Order, People

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.32, Anchor

Having a child as a single mother was a crucible - maybe this is true for all parents. I got rid of so much stuff that didn't really matter in the scheme of things-like throwing stuff out of an airplane that kept me flying too low. What was left was essential, i.e. not a lot of extraneous stuff that had kept me busy and people-pleasing. I just didn't have the luxury of wasting my life force on so much stupidity and distraction. That made me strong.

Mother, Strong, Children

Source: www.psychologytoday.com

Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me,' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' A woman I know says, for her morning prayer, 'Whatever,' and then for the evening, 'Oh, well,' but has conceded that these prayers are more palatable for people without children.

Morning, Prayer, Children

Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.75, Anchor

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

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