Anne Lamott
Alice Adams wrote a sweet note to me after my first novel came out when I was 26, and I was so blown away that I sent her a bunch of stamps by return mail. I have no idea what I was thinking. It was a star-struck impulse.
I go to church every Sunday, which is like going to the gas station once a week and really, really filling up.
I've heard that our greatest cross to carry is ourselves - how gravely we fall short.
Most marriages are a mess, and the children get caught between two bitter, antagonistic parents. My parents stayed married for 27 unhappy years, till their kids were grown, and this was a catastrophe for us.
I feel incredibly successful. I make a living as a writer and am able to help support a big family, my church, my bleeding-heart causes.
I write because writing is the gift God has given me to help people in the world.
When I was a kid, our family used to watch 'Bonanza.' I really liked having a Sunday night TV ritual.
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.
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.
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.
If you asked me, parents were supposed to affect the life of their child in such a way that the child grows up to be responsible, able to participate in life and in community.
I am not writing to try and convert people to fundamental Christianity. I am just trying to share my experience, strength and hope, that someone who is as messed up and neurotic and scarred and scared can be fully accepted by our dear Lord, no questions asked.
I do not have deep theological understanding or opinion, but I do not read the Bible as the literal word of God.
Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.Collection: Minutes
It's better to be kind than to be right.Collection: Be Kind
Close friendships are one of life's miracles - that a few people get to know you deeply, all your messy or shadowy stuff along with the beauty and sweetness, and they still love you. Not only still love you, but love you more and more deeply. I would do anything for my closest friends, and they would do almost anything for me, and that is about as spiritual a truth as you can get.Collection: Friendship
Oh, my God. What if you wake up some day, and you're 65 or 75, and you never got your novel or memoir written; or you didn't go swimming in warm pools or oceans because your thighs were jiggly or you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It's going to break your heart. Don't let this happen.Collection: Nice
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.Collection: Hurt
Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.Collection: Prayer
We are not here to see through one another, but to see one another through.Collection: Cooperation
Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.Collection: Running
Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, 'Well, isn't that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I'll figure out what we're going to do about your stuff.Collection: God
Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.Collection: Faith
How do you begin? The answer is simple: you decide to.Collection: Simple
It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said 'do the best you can with these, they will have to do'. And mostly, against all odds, they do.Collection: Prayer
Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.Collection: Gratitude
You can either practice being right or practice being kind.Collection: Positivity
I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling to the need to be right.Collection: Spiritual
Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all. Laugh, rest, slow down.Collection: Spiritual
My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.Collection: Mind
Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back.Collection: Forgiveness
Hope begins in the dark.Collection: Inspirational
I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.Collection: Tree
When faced with a crisis, do three things: breathe, pray and be kind.Collection: Three
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.Collection: Law
There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, "Why on our hearts, and not in them?" The rabbi answered, "Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your heart, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.Collection: Fall
Pastor Veronica told the story of a sparrow lying in the street with its legs straight up in the air, straining. a warhorse walks up to it, and says, 'What on earth are you doing?' The sparrow replies, 'I heard the sky was falling, and I wanted to help.'The warhorse sneers-- 'Do you really think you're going to hold back the sky, with those scrawny little legs?' And the sparrow says, 'One does what one can.'Collection: Lying
Once an old woman at my church said the secret is that God loves us exactly the way we are and that he loves us too much to let us stay like this, and I'm just trying to trust that.Collection: Change
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.Collection: Writing
Honesty is not necessarily interesting. I don't want to hear about your dreams or your acid trips, probably unless you make them really interesting.Collection: Dream
As a Christian and a feminist, the most important message I can carry and fight for is the sacredness of each human life, and reproductive rights for all women are a crucial part of that. It is a moral necessity that we not be forced to bring children into the world for whom we cannot be responsible and adoring and present. We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society.Collection: Christian
After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid.Collection: Kids
Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away.Collection: Mind
Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend.Collection: True Friend
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.Collection: Music
Nothing can be delicious when you are holding your breath.Collection: Breaths
When we search for something larger than our own selves to hook into, we can come through whatever life throws at us.Collection: Self
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.Collection: Hair
If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days--listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off. You take home all you've taken in, all that you've overheard, and you turn it into gold. (Or at least you try.)Collection: Taken