Anne Lamott Quotes

We're out there somewhere between the known and the unknown, trying to reel in both for a closer look.

Your unconscious can't work when you are breathing down its neck.

For me, Jesus is my cleft in the rock. He is my safest friend, my safe totally loving accepting big brother.

If you have a problem you can solve by throwing money at it, you don't have a very interesting problem.

If our lives are made up of a string of a thousand moments, at some of those moments we look a lot more spiritually evolved than at others.

[S]he believed that the Buddhists were right–that if you want, you will suffer; if you love, you will grieve. (68)

I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from.

I cry intermittently, like a summer rain. I don't feel racked by the crying; in fact, it hydrates me. Then rage wells up in me, and I want to take a crowbar to all the cars in the neighborhood.

All parents are an embarrassment to their kids. Often grandparents are the relief. Kids don't have to resist you.

To be great, art has to point somewhere.

I wish there were shortcuts to wisdom and self-knowledge: cuter abysses or three-day spa wilderness experiences. Sadly, it doesn't work that way. I so resent this.

I don't have very sophisticated taste in music. I listen to a lot of folk music. I like reggae.

I am an Aries. Although I do not believe in astrology, I think this is exactly the right sign to have been born under.

This is the Easter message, that awakening is possible, to the goodness of God, the sacredness of human life, the sisterhood and brotherhood of all.

I've written six novels and four pieces of nonfiction, so I don't really have a genre these days.

I went to church with my grandparents sometimes and I loved it.

When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader.

E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.

I find most famous Christians to be full of themselves and of prejudice and self-loathing, masquerading as devout religious belief. I find all fundamentalism to be terrifying and very destructive.

I can never tell what I'm doing when I'm in the middle of publication because I have no confidence. I have terrible self-esteem, along with boundless narcissism.

Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

So a moral position is not a message. A moral position is a passionate caring inside you.

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

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.

The grief and tears didn't wash me away. They gave me my life back! They cleansed me, baptized me, hydrated the earth at my feet.

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

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.

I've seen prayers answered. But often, in my experiences, if you get what you pray for, you've really shortchanged yourself.

What an incredible drug fear is.

Right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe.

Greasy food is so comforting when you are hungover.

There is nothing more touching to me then a family picture where everyone is trying to look his or her best, but you can see what a mess they all really are.

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.

What if we gave fifty percent of our discretionary budget to the world’s poor and then counted on the moral power of that action to protect us?

For me, being a writer is not an altered state. It's very ponderous, and very - it's like being a shoemaker.

Good writing is about telling the truth.

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.

That thing you had to force yourself to do-the actual act of writing-turns out to be the best part.

I think we're all pretty crazy on this bus. I'm not sure I know anyone who's got all the dots on his or her dice.

What if you wake up some day, and you're 65... and you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life?

Mine was a patchwork God, sewn together from bits of rag and ribbon, Eastern and Western, pagan and Hebrew, everything but the kitchen sink and Jesus.

...It really IS easier to experience spiritual connection when your life is in the process of coming apart.

Everyone is flailing through this life without an owner's manual, with whatever modicum of grace and good humor we can manage.

The first holy truth in God 101 is that men and women of true faith have always had to accept the mystery of God's identity and love and ways. I hate that, but it's the truth.

Life is really pretty tricky, and there's a lot of loss, and the longer you stay alive, the more people you lose whom you actually couldn't live without.

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.

It's so great to be able to make people laugh, because this is so often how we get our selves back.

Expectations are resentment waiting to happen.

'Help' is a prayer that is always answered.