Anne Lamott Quotes

Love is so much bigger than our ignorance.

The reason I never give up hope is because everything is so basically hopeless.

Grace means you're in a different universe from where you had been stuck, when you had absolutely no way to get there on your own.

My idea of absolute happiness is to be in bed on a rainy day, with my blankie, my cat, and my dog.

Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world's worst roommate, like having Janis Joplin with a bad hangover and PMS come to stay with you.

Expectations are resentments under construction.

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.

When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens.

If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've already been in.

When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.

You should not bring more items and hurdles to the obstacle course.

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.

Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we're invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence.

No" is a complete sentence.

To love yourself as you are is a miracle, and to seek yourself is to have found yourself for now. And now is all we have, and love is who we are.

I don't know much, but I understand how entirely doomed I am without God.

Butterflies and birds are like one perfect teaspoon of creation.

The reason 'help' is such a great prayer is that God is the gift of desperation. When you're in despair, you're teachable.

Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.

What’s the difference between you and God? God never thinks he’s you.

Sometimes grace is a ribbon of mountain air that gets in through the cracks.

And as it turns out, if one person is praying for you, buckle up. Things can happen.

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

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

Joy is the best makeup.

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.

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.

I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world-present and in awe.

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

I'm not going to change the way people think about me, but I can say you know what? I'm not going to carry that in my backpack.

Laughter is a bubbly, effervescent form of holiness

Your experiences will be yours alone. But truth and best friendship will rarely if ever disappoint you.

... one of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people. [p. 65]

The world is always going to be dangerous, and people get badly banged up, but how can there be more meaning than helping one another stand up in a wind and stay warm?

These days cry out, as never before, for us to pay attention, so we can move through them and get our joy and pride back.

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

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.

The truth of my experience is that we are all a lot more alike than we are different.

Joy is the best makeup. But a little lipstick is a close runner-up.

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

butterflies were wind energy made visible.

Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it more or less together.

Where do we even start on the daily walk of restoration and awakening? We start where we are.

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

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

Whenever the world throws rose petals at you, which thrill and seduce the ego, beware.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.

We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little.

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.