anne lamott Quotes

You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

- Anne Lamott

A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I'm not going to take anything away from you, you have to give it to Me.

- Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them.

- Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

I was raised with no religious training or influence. Except the influence was to be a moral and ethical person at the secular level. And to be a peace marcher, an activist for civil rights, peace and justice.

- Anne Lamott

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

...the three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you.

- Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

Toni Morrison said, "The function of freedom is to free someone else," and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad that you did. Members of your family and other critics may wish you had kept your secrets. Oh, well, what are you going to do? Get it all down. Let it pour out of you and onto the page. Write an incredibly shitty, self-indulgent, whiny, mewling first draft. Then take out as many of the excesses as you can.

- Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Grace to me is a little bit of extra help when you're feeling stuck or doomed or, probably, hopefully, out of good ideas on how to save yourself, and how to salvage the situation or the friendship or the whatever it is,” Anne Lamott once told me. “I wish it was accompanied by harp music so you could know that's what was happening, but for me it's that extra pause or that extra breath or that extra minute's patience against all odds.” On that first trip to Ireland, grace—the kick-in-the-pants, clarifying, cosmic-pause-button kind of grace—didn't just have a harp. It had an entire soundtrack...

- Cathleen Falsani, Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace

If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there... When nothing new can get in, that's death.

- Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

We must not inflict life on children who will be resented we must not inflict unwanted children on society.

- Anne Lamott

You focus on telling stories,
we do everything else.