Anne Lamott Quotes

Lies cannot nourish or protect you. Only freedom from fear, freedom from lies, can make us beautiful, and keep us safe.

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.

...the three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you.

Certainty is missing the point entirely.

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

Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back.

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.

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

Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting.

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)

And that almost everyone was struggling to wake up, to be loved, and not feel so afraid all the time. That's what the cars, degrees, booze, and drugs were about.

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.

Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend.

When we search for something larger than our own selves to hook into, we can come through whatever life throws at us.

You know how I always say that laughter is carbonated holiness? Well, Robin was the ultimate proof of that, and bubbles are spirit made visible.

Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away.

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.

I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.

Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is.

Left to my own devices, my first inclination is to mess in other people's lives. I secretly believe my whole family, and really the whole world, is my responsibility.

The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.

So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.

There are moments when I am writing when I think that if other people knew how I felt right now, they’d burn me at the stake for feeling so good, so full, so much intense pleasure.

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.

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.

Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.

Peace is joy at rest. Joy is peace on its feet. quoting her pastor in Salon, April 25, 2003

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.

Radical self-care is quantum, and radiates out into the atmosphere, like a little fresh air.

My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean.

When you make friends with fear, it can’t rule you.

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.

My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable

I just try to love and serve everyone, and bring everyone water, and lend an ear; that's what Jesus said to do.

...after a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat.

Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.

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.

Being enough was going to have to be an inside job.

Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act - truth is always subversive.

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.

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 business of having been issued a body is deeply confusing... Bodies are so messy and disappointing.

I don't have any romantic views of parenting. Every step of the way it's really hard. It's a dangerous world, physically and psychologically.

No matter what circumstances, it's hard to be a parent and maintain a sense of self and identity in the world.

Mostly what happens in the novels never happened in real life.