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Anne Lamott Quotes

Total quotes: 18
“So from the wise old pinnacle of my 49 years, I want to tell you that what you're looking for is already inside you. You've heard this before, but the holy thing inside you really is that which causes you to seek it. You can't buy it, lease it, rent it, date it or apply for it. The best job in the world can't give it to you.”
— Anne Lamott, Commencement Address at University of California at Berkeley, 2003
Tagged: Graduation, Commencement, Speech
“And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore.”
— Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
Tagged: Living With Depression, Heartbroken, Contentment, Grieving, Depression
“Thank you, God, who as someone just told me, never said it would be easy, but did promise me that it would work.”
— Anne Lamott
Tagged: God, Christianity, Suffering, Thank You God
“If you want to know how God feels about money look at whom she gives it to.”
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Tagged: Life, Money
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Tagged: Writing, On Writing, How to be a writer, Stories
“Hope is not about proving anything. It's about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us.”
— Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Tagged: Hope, Choices, Love
“Mothering has been the richest experience of my life, but I am still opposed to Mother’s Day. It perpetuates the dangerous idea that all parents are somehow superior to non-parents.”
— Anne Lamott, Why I hate Mother’s Day
Tagged: Motherhood, Parenthood, I Hate Children
“The cross looked like a huge win for the Romans.”
— Anne Lamott, John Mayer on Facebook
Tagged: Christianity, For when things seem hard
“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, A Journey Just Begun: The Story of an Anglican Sisterhood
Tagged: Reading, Living, Dying, Books
“Mother’s Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path... that those with children are more important than those without. ”
— Anne Lamott, Why I hate Mother’s Day
Tagged: Motherhood
“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.”
— Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Tagged: prayer, help, Church
“If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. 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.”
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Tagged: Stories, inspiration, Writing, Writers
“I encourage my students at times like these to get one page of anything written, three hundred words of memories or dreams or stream of consciousness on how much they hate writing — just for the hell of it, just to keep their fingers from becoming too arthritic, just because they have made a commitment to try to write three hundred words every day. Then, on bad days and weeks, let things go at that… Your unconscious can’t work when you are breathing down its neck. You’ll sit there going, ‘Are you done in there yet, are you done in there yet?’ But it is trying to tell you nicely, ‘Shut up and go away.'”
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Tagged: Writer's Block, Advice, Writing, Art, Creativity, Encouragement
“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly – that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
— Anne Lamott, 21 Absolutely Heartwrenching Quotes On Loss And Grief
Tagged: Grief, Grieving, Loss, Love, Beloved, Broken Heart, cold, Pain, Suffering
“The garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things. The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe…And what a wonderful relief every so often to know who your enemy is–because in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time. And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth and growth and beauty and danger and triumph–and then everything dies anyway, right? But you just keep doing it.”
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Tagged: OITNB, Garden, Life, Inspirational, Death, Temporary, Time, Zen, Spilled Ink
“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
— Anne Lamott, Quotes That Help You Through The Hard Times in Life
Tagged: Loss, Pain, Healing, Broken Heart
“And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore.”
— Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
Tagged: Depression, broken, Life
“We talk about ‘loving one’s child’ as if a child were a mystical unicorn. Ninety-eight percent of American parents secretly feel that if you have not had and raised a child, your capacity for love is somehow diminished. Ninety-eight percent of American parents secretly believe that non-parents cannot possibly know what it is to love unconditionally, to be selfless, to put yourself at risk for the gravest loss. But in my experience, it’s parents who are prone to exhibit terrible self-satisfaction and selfishness, who can raise children as adjuncts, like rooms added on in a remodel. Their children’s value and achievements in the world are reflected glory, necessary for these parents’ self-esteem, and sometimes, for the family’s survival. This is how children’s souls are destroyed.”
— Anne Lamott, Why I hate Mother’s Day
Tagged: Motherhood, Parenthood, I Hate Children, Childhood
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