American author (1954- )
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
Bird by Bird
You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town.
ANNE LAMOTT
Grace (Eventually):Thoughts on Faith
Sometimes, no matter how screwed up things seem, I feel like we're all at a wedding. But you can't just come out and say, We're at a wedding! Have some cake! You need to create a world into which we can enter, a world where we can see this.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
My mind is a bad neighborhood that I try not to go into alone.
ANNE LAMOTT
Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
You know, 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
interview, NPR, Nov. 19, 2012
We're like Magic 8-Balls. After you ask your question and shake the 8-Ball, you read the answer in the little window. If you ever broke open a Magic 8-Ball with a hammer, you discovered that it contained a many-sided plastic object, with an answer on every facet, floating in a cylinder of murky blue fluid. The many-sided core held the answer to your question. My theory is that, as with our children, as with every surface of that geodesic dome inside the 8-Ball, every age we've ever been is who we are.
ANNE LAMOTT
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
We stuffed scary feelings down, and they made us insane. I think it is pretty universal, all this repression leading to violence and fundamentalism and self-loathing and addiction.
ANNE LAMOTT
Salon, Nov. 3, 2014
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
Salon, Nov. 3, 2014
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
Salon, Nov. 3, 2014
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).
ANNE LAMOTT
Salon, Nov. 3, 2014
"No" is a complete sentence.
ANNE LAMOTT
Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
Laughter is carbonated holiness.
ANNE LAMOTT
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
All criticism hurts me. I'm so in the wrong business.
ANNE LAMOTT
Salon, Nov. 3, 2014
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.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
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.
ANNE LAMOTT
interview, Friends Journal, Jan. 30, 2013
It's so great to be able to make people laugh, because this is so often how we get our selves back.
ANNE LAMOTT
interview, Friends Journal, Jan. 30, 2013
I love memoirs. They are probably my favorite literary form, along with biographies. The more confessional, the better. There is so, so, so little truth in the popular culture, and I am starved and grateful for any I can find.
ANNE LAMOTT
Salon, Nov. 3, 2014
Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird