Anne Lamott Quotes

Writing like this is a little like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it.

~ Anne Lamott

When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are.

~ Anne Lamott

For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.

~ Anne Lamott

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 ...

~ Anne Lamott

Help is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.

~ Anne Lamott

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

~ Anne Lamott

Nothing can be delicious when you are holding your breath.

~ Anne Lamott

And we've read scary books and watched scary movies and TV shows together. He's met monsters, ghouls, and demons on the page and on the screen. There's nothing like watching Anaconda with your best friend or lying in bed next to your mother reading Roald Dahl, because that way you get to explore dark stuff safely. You get to laugh with it, to step out on the vampire's dance floor and take him for a spin, and then step back into your life. When you make friends with fear, it can't rule you.

~ Anne Lamott

She lived in fear of ifonic endings. (91)

~ Anne Lamott

With THC in your system, you don't dream. And you need to. Otherwise it is like losing one of your senses. Dreams are part of your wholeness. ... when you're dreaming, you're not the one calling the shots. So it's a reprieve. ... the dream world had rules in it. You couldn't read a clock in your dreams. It would not give you the time. If the lights were on in a room, you could not turn them off in a dream. ... in indigenous tribes all over the world, the dream world was like church. [p. 247]

~ Anne Lamott

She slept deeply, but as usual, she did not dream. It had been months; none of them was dreaming anymore. [p. 227]

~ Anne Lamott

I have become the woman I hardly dared imagine I could be. There are parts I don’t love—until a few years ago, I had no idea that you could have cellulite on your stomach—but not only do I get along with me most of the time now, I am militantly and maternally on my own side. Left to my own devices, would I trade this for firm thighs, fewer wrinkles, a better memory? You bet I would. That is why it’s such a blessing that I’m not left to my own devices.

~ Anne Lamott

For too long, and despite what people told me, I had fallen for what the culture said about beauty, youth, features, heights, weights, hair textures, upper arms.

~ Anne Lamott

Most of us don’t notice how great we look until years, even decades later. Not long ago, I was looking at photos of myself at various ages and weights—way before the neckular deterioration began, way before the fanny pack of menopause—and I could see how gorgeous I must have looked to everyone else.

~ Anne Lamott

There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, Why on our hearts, and not in them? The rabbi answered, Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your heart, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.

~ Anne Lamott

When we did art with the kids, the demons would lie down.

~ Anne Lamott

You want to avoid at all costs drawing your characters on those that already exist in other works of fiction. You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should confirm what you’ve observed in the world.

~ Anne Lamott

I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me--that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

~ Anne Lamott

Certainty is missing the point entirely.

~ Anne Lamott

It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.

~ Anne Lamott

Resentments make even the best of us feel superior.

~ Anne Lamott

The beginning of forgiveness is often exhaustion. You're pooped, thank God.

~ Anne Lamott

We learn from pain that some of the things we thought were castles turn out to be prisons, and we desperately want out, but even though we built them, we can't find the door. Yet maybe if you ask God for help in knowing which direction to face, you'll have a moment of intuition. Maybe you'll see at least one next right step you can take.

~ Anne Lamott

A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal.

~ Anne Lamott

A good marriage is supposed to be one where each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal.

~ Anne Lamott

Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.

~ Anne Lamott

In paintings, music, poetry, architecture, we feel the elusive energy that moves through us and the air and the ground all the time, that usually disperses and turns chaotic in our busy-ness and distractedness and moodiness. Artists channel it, corral it, make it visible to the rest of us. The best works of art are like semaphores of our experience, signaling what we didn't know was true but do now.

~ Anne Lamott

Usually if you pray from the heart, you get an answer—the phone rings or the mail comes, and light gets in through the cracks, so you can see the next right thing to do. That’s all you need.

~ Anne Lamott

Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.

~ Anne Lamott

And I guess when you take away the resentment and disappointment, it's that simple. It is what we do in families: we help, because we were helped.

~ Anne Lamott

I tell you, families are definitely the training ground for forgiveness.

~ Anne Lamott

Mattie sat at the table, obsessing, orbiting around herself. She was sick of her worried, hostile mind. It would have killed her long before, she felt, if it hadn't needed the transportation.

~ Anne Lamott

I've given guys blow jobs just because I've run out of things to talk about.'Oh, Rae. Who hasn't

~ Anne Lamott

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. It means that you are willing to stop being such a jerk. When you are aware of all that has been given to you, in your lifetime and the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back.

~ Anne Lamott

Kids are hard -they drive you crazy and break your heart- whereas grandchildren make you feel great about life, and yourself, and your ability to love someone unconditionally, finally, after all these years.

~ Anne Lamott

There are really places in your heart that you don't know exist until you love a child.

~ Anne Lamott

How alive am I willing to be?

~ Anne Lamott

I'll live as well, as deeply, as madly as I can--until I die.

~ Anne Lamott

I watched him carefully. He was making art because he has to, and because he's brave enough to try and make contact, right there on the edge of madness, where he dreams.

~ Anne Lamott

His art springs out of bubbling underground necessity, as if he's somehow dipping himself into the river that gave him life; he's making dream material visible.

~ Anne Lamott