Top 100 Lamott's Quotes

#1. 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.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #3702
#2. Jesus said that whatever you did to the least of his people, you did to him, and the lifers in penitentiaries are the leastest people in this country. Just look to see whose budgets are being cut these days -- the old, the crazies, the children in Head Start -- and that's where Jesus will be.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #79842
#3. My dad taught me that to be a writer is a decision and a habit. It's not anything lofty, and it doesn't have that much to do with inspiration. You have to develop the habit of being a certain way with yourself. You do it at the debt of honor.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #80467
#4. I was reminded of the Four Immutable Laws of the Spirit: Whoever is present are the right people. Whenever it begins is the right time. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened. And when it's over, it's over.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #106781
#5. Do you mind even a little that you are still addicted to people-pleasing, and are still putting everyone else's needs and laundry and career ahead of your creative, spiritual life? Giving all your life force away, to "help" and impress. Well, your help is not helpful, and falls short.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #119509
#6. A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It's a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of the truth, and then you give your heart to expressing it clearly.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #144710
#7. To heal, it seems we have to stand in the middle of the horror, at the foot of the cross, and wait out another's suffering where that person can see us. To be honest, that sucks. It's the worst, even if you are the mother of God.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #146142
#8. Shirley Jackson said that a confused reader is an antagonistic reader, and I live by that. It's okay to start anywhere, and to let yourself write a big sloppy overly-detailed first draft. You just jump in, knowing that the water will be cold at first, but no one is making you swim.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #153046
#9. By then I'd figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it's the gift of feeling floppier.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #196881
#10. When you're kind to people, and you pay attention, you make a field of comfort around them, and you get it back - the Golden Rule meets the Law of Karma meets Murphy's Law.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #215719
#11. Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world's worst roommate.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #232699
#12. Every Sunday I nudge Sam in her direction, and he walks to where she is sitting and hugs her. She smells him behind the ears, where he most smells like sweet unwashed new potatoes. This is in fact what I think God may smell like, a young child's slightly dirty neck.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #239331
#13. One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do
you can either type or kill yourself.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #252153
#14. 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.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #297390
#15. 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.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #312319
#16. There is cracks, cracks, in everything, that's how the light gets in.' I had cracks but not the hope.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #313194
#17. I have been somebody who has not written a great deal about the truth of my family's life.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #330403
#18. 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.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #335988
#19. It's better to be kind than to be right.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #368065
#20. You fall so deeply in love with your grandbaby. It's so so so much easier than being a parent, because you really don't have much responsibility. And just when you are at the end of your rope with exhaustion, the parents take the baby away. So it's the best of both worlds.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #371751
#21. 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

Lamott's Quotes #382862
#22. I did not raise my son, Sam, to celebrate Mother's Day. I didn't want him to feel some obligation to buy me pricey lunches or flowers, some annual display of gratitude that you have to grit your teeth and endure.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #411046
#23. 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

Lamott's Quotes #420380
#24. [W]hen you're dreaming, you're not the one calling the shots. So it's a reprieve.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #443089
#25. I think we're all pretty crazy on this bus. I'm not sure I know anyone who's got all the dots on his or her dice.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #469907
#26. San Quentin's is the safest beach in the world. We're not talking about lifeguards here who might yell at someone who's being rude-we're talking about armed guards, in watchtowers, two blocks away.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #503585
#27. What if Sam's heart got broken again? As with most kids who are fourteen, it has been spackled and duct-taped and caulked back together many times as it is. [p. 258]

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #529208
#28. There are few experiences as depressing as that anxious barren state known as writer's block, where you sit staring at your blank page like a cadaver, feeling your mind congeal, feeling you talent run down your leg and into your sock.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #531139
#29. We all have the dark, ignorant shadow inside us. I have worked endlessly to reveal it and heal it in me, but of course there's some primitive weird stuff in me. The Tea Party is about exhorting white supremacy, though, so I've had a tiny bit of trouble experiencing sympathy.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #538051
#30. Summer nearly does me in every year. It's too hot and the light is unforgiving and the days go on way too long.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #548539
#31. It's like bitch-slapping E.T.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #571202
#32. Everyone was on God's payroll, whether they knew it or not.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #571771
#33. Wonder takes our breath away, and makes room for new breath. That's why they call it breathtaking.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #581771
#34. When you are on the knife's edge - when nobody knows exactly what is going to happen next, only that it will be worse - you take in today.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #613353
#35. It's intrusive for grandparents to think they're in charge. It's manipulative. Also, it's self-destructive, since if the parents have to resist you, you won't get your mitts on the kid as often.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #613405
#36. 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.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #630375
#37. I just try to love and serve everyone, and bring everyone water, and lend an ear; that's what Jesus said to do.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #632775
#38. We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #638489
#39. his cell phone - the adolescent's pacemaker.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #638949
#40. The women's movement burst forth when I was fifteen. That was when I began to believe that life might semi-work out after all. The cavalry had arrived. Women were starting to say that you got to tell the truth now, that you had to tell the truth if you were going to heal and have an authentic life.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #646015
#41. You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart
your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #660986
#42. In general, though, there's no point in writing hopeless novels. 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. Sometimes

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #673315
#43. Why couldn't Jesus command us to obsess over everything, to try to control and manipulate people, to try not to breathe at all, or to pay attention, stomp away to brood when people annoy us, and then eat a big bag of Hershey's Kisses in bed?

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #713114
#44. Does sunset sometimes look like the sun is coming up? Do you know what a faithful love is like? You're crying; you say you've burned yourself. But can you think of anyone who's not hazy with smoke? - Rumi

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #721428
#45. 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.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #726365
#46. 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

Lamott's Quotes #726517
#47. I watched him carefully. He was making art because he has to, and because he's brave enough to try and make contact, right there on the edge of madness, where he dreams.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #767675
#48. 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.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #771129
#49. Jesus is busy with his own stuff, and is not going to get involved in your little tug-of-war. Plus, don't forget, he has his own mother to deal with. She's all he can handle, as far as mothers go.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #789844
#50. It's almost like learning to meditate to learn to hear what your kid is actually saying.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #831497
#51. Almost every single thing you hope publication will do for you is a fantasy, a hologram
it's the eagle on your credit card that only seems to soar.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #834791
#52. 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

Lamott's Quotes #834964
#53. Mothers are supposed to listen and, afterward, to respond with some wisdom and perspective, but these things were not my mother's strong suit.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #882524
#54. I know God enjoys hearing my take on how best we should all proceed, as I'm always full of useful advice. I'm sure God says either, "Oh, I so love Annie's selfless and evolved thoughts," or else "Jeez. What a head case.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #883915
#55. 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.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #901788
#56. Sometimes it feels like God has reached down and touched me, blessed me a thousand times over, and sometimes it all feels like a mean joke, like God's advisers are Muammar Qaddafi and Phyllis Schlafly.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #901938
#57. I get to tell my truth. I get to seek meaning and realization. I get to live fully, wildly, imperfectly. That's why I'm alive. And all I actually have to offer as a writer is my version of life. Every single thing that has happened to me is mine.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #934694
#58. I'm human, you're human, let me greet your humanness. Let's be people together for a while.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1015126
#59. Grief is just so scary ... If we finally begin to cry all those suppressed tears, they will surely wash us away like the Mississippi River. That's what our parents told us. We got sent to our rooms for having huge feelings. In my family, if you cried or got angry, you didn't get dinner.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1044707
#60. The opposite of faith is not doubt, it's certainty.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1045064
#61. It's always the same old problem: how to find ourselves in the great yammering of ego and tragedy and discomfort and obsession with everyone else's destinies.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1056200
#62. Anne Lamott's priest friend Tom, how to get through:
"Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe," he said. "Right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe."
Salon April 25, 2003

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1057727
#63. What if we gave fifty percent of our discretionary budget to the world's poor and then counted on the moral power of that action to protect us?

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1064785
#64. Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1084927
#65. The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just any words, but, if you can, into rhythm and blues.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1091389
#66. Everything takes me forever. It's all lurch, flail. I hope that is good news to you writers.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1101814
#67. Now, if you ask me, what's going on is that we're all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1159691
#68. We're often ashamed of asking for so much help because it seems selfish or petty or narcissistic, but I think, if there's a God - and I believe there is - that God is there to help. That's what God's job is.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1175411
#69. I wanted to produce Nancy LaMott's albums, so I created my own record company.

David Friedman

Lamott's Quotes #1179912
#70. What's the difference between you and God? God never thinks he's you.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1183907
#71. His art springs out of bubbling underground necessity, as if he's somehow dipping himself into the river that gave him life; he's making dream material visible.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1188585
#72. She walked to the front door. 'Hello?'
'Hello,' a woman's voice said.
'Are you a Witness?'
'I swear to God I didn't see a thing.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1200263
#73. If you're lucky you find your way into a spiritual community and you start to find the great teachers of all the ages who said the same thing. There's only love, you're made of love.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1216656
#74. No one is more sentimentalized in America than mothers on Mother's Day, but no one is more often blamed for the culture's bad people and behavior.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1220626
#75. I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe over the last twenty-five years, that there's something to be said about keeping prayer simple. Help, Thanks, Wow.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1255873
#76. There's freedom in hitting bottom

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1273463
#77. Nothing heals us like letting people know our scariest parts: When people listen to you cry and lament, and look at you with love, it's like they are holding the baby of you.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1285135
#78. That's what's so touching about weddings: Two people fall in love, and decide to see if their love might stand up over time, if there might be enough grace and forgiveness and memory lapses to help the whole shebang hang together.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1311740
#79. Is it okay to be a tiny tiny bit tired of Caitlyn? Yes, was very brave but so far he's gone from man to mannequin, instead of man to woman.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1327101
#80. It is in many people's best interest for you not to find
yourself, but it only matters that it is in yours, and the
whole world's, to proceed.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1337789
#81. It's funny where we look for salvation, and where we actually find it.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1338037
#82. No matter what circumstances, it's hard to be a parent and maintain a sense of self and identity in the world.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1348038
#83. I learned that opening myself to my own love and to life's tough loveliness not only was the most delicious, amazing thing on earth but also was quantum. It would radiate out to a cold, hungry world. Beautiful moments heal, as do real cocoa, Pete Seeger, a walk on old fire roads.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1369307
#84. Every woman's path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is, sadly, true. An unhealthy mother's love is withering.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1399129
#85. In fact, there's really only one thing that everything's made of; it's energy.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1406174
#86. I thought the secret of life was obvious: be here now, love as if your whole life depended on it, find your life's work, and try to get hold of a giant panda.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1409245
#87. You have to be a warrior and say, "Maybe it's everyone else's system, but it's not mine." (from her recent interview here, on Goodreads)

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1411060
#88. Pope Francis says the name of God is mercy. Our name was mercy, too, until we put it away to become more productive, more admired and less vulnerable. We tend to forget it's still there.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1429377
#89. The first holy truth in God 101 is that men and women of true faith have always had to accept the mystery of God's identity and love and ways. I hate that, but it's the truth.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1442583
#90. The difference between you and God is that God doesn't think He's you.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1472581
#91. Life is really pretty tricky, and there's a lot of loss, and the longer you stay alive, the more people you lose whom you actually couldn't live without.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1473880
#92. 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

Lamott's Quotes #1494959
#93. I was usually filled with a sense of something like shame until I'd remember that wonderful line of Blake's- that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love- and I would take a long deep breath and force these words out of my strangulated throat: Thank you.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1497596
#94. Also, I have a pouch below my belly, whereas I'd always had a thin waist before. Now there's this situation down there, low and grabbable. If it had a zipper, you could store stuff in there, like a fanny pack.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1529476
#95. Just don't pretend you know more about your characters than they do, because you don't. Stay open to them. It's teatime and all the dolls are at the table. Listen. It's that simple.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1546446
#96. Life on earth is a head-scratcher for anyone who's paying attention. This place has been a bad match for me since I was four.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1552767
#97. You keep working on your piece over and over, trying to get the sections and paragraphs and sentences and the whole just right, but there's a point at which you can tell you've begun hurting the work with your perfectionism. Then you have to release the work to new eyes.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1553438
#98. 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

Lamott's Quotes #1580960
#99. It's a great time to be alive.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1580970
#100. It's so great to be able to make people laugh, because this is so often how we get our selves back.

Anne Lamott

Lamott's Quotes #1583875

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