Anne Lamott

Author

1954-04-10

Anne Lamott is an American author and essayist known for memoir and nonfiction writing on faith, life, and creativity. She is widely read for personal essays and books on writing.

Quotes by Anne Lamott

I'll live as well, as deeply, as madly as I can--until I die.
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How alive am I willing to be?
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I hate how long it takes to feel radical, militantly maternal self-acceptance.
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There are really places in your heart that you don't know exist until you love a child.
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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.
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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.
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I've given guys blow jobs just because I've run out of things to talk about.'Oh, Rae. Who hasn't
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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.
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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.
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I tell you, families are definitely the training ground for forgiveness.
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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.
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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.
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When you don't have enough or you run out, you feel in your core that the leak has begun and there will be no end to the leakage. And this makes you feel like a chump. Whereas having some money gives you the conviction that you're not naked in the howling wind, even though you basically are, existentially.
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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.
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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.
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A good marriage is supposed to be one where each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal.
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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.
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A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal.
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Certainty is missing the point entirely.
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It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.
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