Anne Lamott
I cry intermittently, like a summer rain. I don't feel racked by the crying; in fact, it hydrates me. Then rage wells up in me, and I want to take a crowbar to all the cars in the neighborhood.Collection: Summer
I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from.Collection: Son
Whenever the world throws rose petals at you, which thrill and seduce the ego, beware.Collection: Rose
Listen to your broccoli and it will tell you how to eat it.Collection: Broccoli
Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.Collection: Intuition
And you try to quiet your mind so you can hear.Collection: Mind
I sat down in the sand, breathless with shame and failure. God, I thought, some defender of the weak. Some freedom fighter: Joan of Arc in sunscreen.Collection: Fighter
He got me a cup of tea with honey, toast with honey, yogurt with honey, like I was John the Baptist with the flu.Collection: Tea
I am learning slowly to bring my crazy pinball-machine mind back to this place.Collection: Crazy
If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.Collection: Laughing
The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion-not to look around and say, 'Look at yourselves, you idiots!,' but to say, 'This is who we are.Collection: Mean
This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of--please forgive me--wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds.Collection: Writing
Slowly, after dozens of rejection slips and failures and false starts and postponed dreams - what Langston Hughes called dreams deferred - I stepped onto the hallowed ground of being a published novelist, and then 15 years later, I even started to make real money.Collection: Dream
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?Collection: Jesus
If your wife locks you out of the house, you don't have a problem with your door.Collection: Doors
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.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Grief
...one of the worst things about being a parent, for me, is the self-discovery, the being face to face with one's secret insanity and brokenness and rage.Collection: Discovery
I became a Christian before I got sober. So I was a drunk, bulimic Christian.Collection: Christian
It feels like I'm babysitting in the Twilight Zone. I keep waiting for the parents to show up because we are out of chips and diet cokes.Collection: Twilight
It's almost like learning to meditate to learn to hear what your kid is actually saying.Collection: Kids
The beauty of modesty ... a virtue the world doesn't have much truck with: one ordinary flower in a vase, as opposed to a bouquet.Collection: Flower
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.Collection: Confused
We write to expose the unexposed. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer's job is to see what's behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues. You can't do this without discovering your own true voice, and you can't find your true voice and peer behind the door and report honestly and clearly to us if your parents are reading over your shoulder.Collection: Jobs
I'm very sad about Mitch McConnell probably getting to be Senate majority leader, if only for two years. To me, he is just everything that is wrong with the world, a bullying obstructionist blowhard liar (not to put too fine a point on it).Collection: Bullying
But it was the singing that pulled me in and split me wide open.Collection: Singing
My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him. I had some sort of gift and when it came time to try to find a publisher I had a little bit of an "in" because I had his agent I could turn to, to at least read my initial offerings when I was about 20. But the only problem was that they were just awful, they were just terrible stories and my agent, who ended up being my agent, was very, very sweet about it, but it took about four years until I actually had something worth trying to sell.Collection: Sweet
So how on earth can I bring a child into the world, knowing that such sorrow lies ahead, that it is such a large part of what it means to be human? I'm not sure. That's my answer: I'm not sure.Collection: Children
All criticism hurts me. I'm so in the wrong business.Collection: Hurt
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.Collection: Crazy
I’ve heard it said that every day you need half an hour of quiet time for yourself, or your Self, unless you’re incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour. I promise you, it is there. Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.Collection: Fighting
What’s the difference between you and God? God never thinks he’s you.Collection: Prayer
You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist. You can make the work a chore, or you can have a good time. You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself.Collection: Artist
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. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.Collection: Prayer
The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines.Collection: Snacks
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.Collection: Gratitude
Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we're invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence.Collection: Prayer
But you can’t get to any of these truths by sitting in a field smiling beatifically, avoiding your anger and damage and grief. Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don’t have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not go in to. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in – then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.Collection: Grief
Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors.Collection: Prayer
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.Collection: Prayer
You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.Collection: Writing
Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.Collection: Reading
Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, "Well, that's pretty much what I thought I'd see," you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here. [...] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.Collection: Expectations
It turned out this man worked for the Dalai Lama. And she said gently-that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born-and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.Collection: Buddhist
Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.Collection: Jobs
Intelligence, goodness, humanity, excitement, serenity. Over time, these are the things that change the musculature of your face, as do laughter, and animation, and especially whatever peace you can broker with the person inside. It's furrow, pinch, and judgement that make us look older - our mothers were right. They said that if you made certain faces, they would stick, and they do. But our mothers forgot that faces of kindness and integrity stick as well.Collection: Mother
You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn't nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.Collection: Space
You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself.Collection: Badass
You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t.Collection: Mistake