Anne Lamott Quotes About Children

Quotes about: Children

• I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.

  Anne Lamott

  Inspiring, Funny Inspirational, Children

  Anne Lamott (1994). “Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year”, Fawcett

• Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived...Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation... Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend. What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, True Friend, Mean

• You were loved because God loves, period. God loved you, and everyone, not because you believed in certain things, but because you were a mess, and lonely, and His or Her child. God loved you no matter how crazy you felt on the inside, no matter what a fake you were; always, even in your current condition, even before coffee. God loves you crazily, like I love you...like a slightly overweight auntie, who sees only your marvelousness and need.

  Anne Lamott

  Lonely, Children, Crazy

  Anne Lamott (2010). “Imperfect Birds: A Novel”, p.17, Penguin

• One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline.... But also every single day a kid needs a break.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Kids, Parenting

• 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.

  Anne Lamott

  Christian, Children, Fighting

  Anne Lamott (2008). “Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith”, p.81, Penguin

• Let’s think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world…Try walking around with a child who’s going, ‘Wow, wow! Look at that dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that red sky!’ And the child points, and you look, and you see, and you start going, ‘Wow! Look at that huge crazy hedge! Look at that teeny little baby! Look at the scary dark cloud!’ I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world – present and in awe.

  Anne Lamott

  Dog, Baby, Children

• This is one thing they forget to mention in most child-rearing books, that at times you will just lose your mind. Period.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Book, Mind

  Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.96, Penguin

• You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. ... You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file. ... You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. ... Then your mental illnesses arrive at the desk like your sickest, most secretive relatives. And they pull up chairs in a semicircle around the computer, and they try to be quiet but you know they are there with their weird coppery breath, leering at you behind your back.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Typewriters, Trying

• 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.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Lying, Mean

  Anne Lamott (1994). “Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year”, Fawcett

• You want to protect your child from pain, and what you get instead is life, and grace; and though theologians insist that grace is freely given, the truth is that sometimes you pay for it through the nose. And you can't pay your child's way.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Pain, Grace

• We can't understand when we're pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here, on Earth, for a time - like the Egyptians with their pyramids, only with children.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Sibling, Mean

• I see that children fill the existential hollowness many people feel; that when we have children, we know they will need us, and maybe love us, but we don't have a clue how hard it is going to be.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, People, Needs

• I suspect that he was a child who thought differently than his peers, who may have had serious conversations with grown-ups, who as a young person, like me, accepted being alone quite a lot. I think that this sort of person often becomes either a writer or a career criminal.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Thinking, Careers

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.20, Anchor

• These are pictures of the people in my family where we look like the most awkward and desperate folk you ever saw, poster children for the human condition.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, People, Awkward

• I used to love to untangle chains when I was a child. I had thin, busy fingers, and I never gave up. Perhaps there was a psychiatric component to my concentration but like much of my psychic damage, this worked to everyone's advantage.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Psychics, Damage

  Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.219, Penguin

• No one tells you that your life is effectively over when you have a child: that you're never going to draw another complacent breath again... or that whatever level of hypochondria and rage you'd learned to repress and live with is going to seem like the good old days.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Levels, Life Is

• You've got to learn to let go and let your children fall, and fail. If you try to protect them from hurt, and always rush to their side with Band-Aids, they won't learn about life, and what is true, what works, what helps, and what are real consequences of certain kinds of behavior. When they do get hurt, which they will, they won't know how to take care of their grown selves. They won't even know where the aspirin is kept.

  Anne Lamott

  Letting Go, Hurt, Children

• 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.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Kids, Years

• What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Order, People

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.32, Anchor

• You want to give me chocolate and flowers? That would be great. I love them both. I just don't want them out of guilt, and I don't want them if you're not going to give them to all the people who helped mother our children.

  Anne Lamott

  Mother, Children, Flower

• 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

  Children, Blue, Magic

  Anne Lamott (2008). “Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith”, p.64, Penguin

• 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

  Children, Knowing, Shapes

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.22, Anchor

• Sometimes I think God loves the ones who most desperately ache and are most desperately lost - his or her wildest, most messed-up children - the way you'd ache and love a screwed-up rebel daughter in juvenile hall.

  Anne Lamott

  Daughter, Children, Thinking

• Talking to the parents of older kids was helpful for me, since parents of kids the same age as yours won't admit how horrible their children are.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Kids, Talking

  Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.94, Penguin

• Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me,' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' A woman I know says, for her morning prayer, 'Whatever,' and then for the evening, 'Oh, well,' but has conceded that these prayers are more palatable for people without children.

  Anne Lamott

  Morning, Prayer, Children

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.75, Anchor

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