Anne Lamott Quotes

276 Sourced Quotes

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

Anne Lamott
When you pray, you are not starting the conversation from scratch, just remembering to plug back into a conversation that's always in progress.

Anne Lamott
You just have to keep getting out of your own way so that whatever it is that wants to be written can use you to write it.

Anne Lamott
Every time I see the bumper sticker that says We think we're humans having spiritual experiences, but we're really spirits having human experiences, I (a) think it's true and (b) want to ram the car.

Anne Lamott
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.

Anne Lamott
Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong. It is no wonder if we sometimes tend to take ourselves perhaps a bit too seriously.

Anne Lamott
One line of dialogue that rings true reveals character in a way that pages of description can't.

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

Anne Lamott
Some people seem to understand this - that life and change take time - but I am not one of those people.

Anne Lamott
When he sees little kids sitting in the backseat of cars, in those little car seats that have steering wheels, with grim expressions of concentration on their faces, clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car to do whatever it is doing, he thinks of himself and his relationship with God: God who drives along silently, gently amused, in the real driver's seat.

Anne Lamott
The best thing about being an artist, instead of a madman or someone who writes letters to the editor, is that you get to engage in satisfying work. Even if you never publish a word, you have something important to pour yourself into.

Anne Lamott
The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later.

Anne Lamott
I do believe that God is with us even when we're at our craziest and that this goodness guides, provides, and protects.

Anne Lamott
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.

Anne Lamott
I get thirsty people glasses of water, even if that thirsty person is just me.

Anne Lamott
My understanding is that you get to choose which of your thoughts to go with.

Anne Lamott
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.

Anne Lamott
I took notes on the people around me, in my town, in my family, in my memory. I took notes on my own state of mind, my grandiosity, the low self-esteem. I wrote down the funny stuff I overheard. I learned to be like a ship's rat, veined ears trembling, and I learned to scribble it all down.

Anne Lamott
I woke up full of hate and fear the day before the most recent peace march in San Francisco. This was disappointing: I'd hoped to wake up feeling somewhere between Virginia Woolf and Wavy Gravy.

Anne Lamott
Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere.... There are many obvious advantages to this. You don't have to dress up, for instance, and you can't hear them boo you right away.

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

Anne Lamott
When my friend Pammy was dying at the age of 37 we went shopping at Macy's. She was in a wheelchair, with a wig and three weeks to live. I tried on a short dress and came out to model it for Pammy. I asked if she thought it made me look big in the thighs, and she said, so kindly, 'Annie? You just don't have that kind of time.' I live by this story.

Anne Lamott
Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. If you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare.

Anne Lamott
Novels ought to have hope; at least, American novels ought to have hope. French novels don't need to. We mostly win wars, they lose them. Of course, they did hide more Jews than many other countries, and this is a form of winning.

Anne Lamott
Sam said to me the other day, "I love you like 20 tyrannosauruses on 20 mountaintops," and this is the exact same way in which I love him.

Anne Lamott
I guess he'll have to figure out someday that he is supposed to have this dark side, that it is part of what it means to be human, to have the darkness just as much as the light- that in fact the dark parts make the light visible; without them, the light would disappear. But I guess he has to figure other stuff out first, like how to keep his neck from flopping all over the place and how to sit up.

Anne Lamott
The thing about light is that it really isn't yours; it's what you gather and shine back. And it gets more power from reflectiveness; if you sit still and take it in, it fills your cup, and then you can give it off yourself.

Anne Lamott
Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence.

Anne Lamott
Music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way.

Anne Lamott
My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable.

Anne Lamott