Anne Lamott Quotes

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.

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

I am going to notice the lights of the earth, the sun and the moon and the stars, the lights of our candles as we march, the lights with which spring teases us, the light that is already present.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

...most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of the people around you.

Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?

The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it...I would discover that it hadn't washed me away.

Jealousy has always 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 naturally prefer the company of people who hold grudges, as long as they are not held against me.

Frequently, as so many poets and psalmists and songwriters have said, the invisible shift happens through the broken places.

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

Being a parent is absolutely exhausting and draining, along with all the joy and love.

We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.

I worry that Jesus drinks himself to sleep when he hears me talk like this.

If you have a body, you are entitled to the full range of feelings. It comes with the package.

Sometimes grace works like water wings when you feel you are sinking.

Dancing almost always turns out to be a good idea.

After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid.

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

I don't write about the intimate details of my cousins and aunts and uncles, and my mother and my father because it's not right to, for me.

I just can't get over how much babies cry. I really had no idea what I was getting into. To tell you the truth, I thought it would be more like getting a cat.

Sometimes it takes failure to figure out who you aren't.

You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t.

Getting into a new relationship is like pouring Miracle-Gro on your character defects.

A big heart is both a clunky and a delicate thing; it doesn't protect itself and it doesn't hide. It stands out, like a baby's fontanel, where you can see the soul pulse through.

Small is how blessings, healing, progress and increase occur.

Your inside person doesn’t age. Your inside person is soul, is heart, in the eternal now, the ageless, the old, the young, all the ages you’ve ever been.

It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.

Pay attention to the beauty surrounding you.

Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

Some people won't go the extra mile, and then on their birthday, when no one makes a fuss, they feel neglected and bitter.

Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.

Nothing can be delicious when you are holding your breath.

You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.

I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and help save the world.

Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all. Laugh, rest, slow down.

My mother's eyes were large and brown, like my son's, but unlike Sam's, they were always frantic, like a hummingbird who can't quite find the flower but keeps jabbing around.

I go to church every Sunday, which is like going to the gas station once a week and really, really filling up.

Honesty is not necessarily interesting. I don't want to hear about your dreams or your acid trips, probably unless you make them really interesting.

I like to read away as much of the afternoon as possible, until real life rears its ugly head.

My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.

It feels like I'm babysitting in the Twilight Zone. I keep waiting for the parents to show up because we are out of chips and diet cokes.

It was not facing what life dealt that made you crazy, but rather trying to set life straight where it was unstraightenable.

Pets are the world to me. I think they are the most obvious manifestations of divine love that we are going to see this side of eternity.

... everyone has come to understand that unconditional love is a reality, but with as shelf life of about eight to ten seconds. [p. 110]

Radical self-care is what we've been longing for, desperate for, our entire lives-friendship with our own hearts.

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

She felt as if the mosaic she had been assembling out of life's little shards got dumped to the ground, and there was no way to put it back together.

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.

For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.