Anne Lamott Quotes About Giving

Quotes about: Giving

• Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.

  Anne Lamott

  Inspiring, Hope, Giving Up

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.23, Anchor

• Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.

  Anne Lamott

  Relationship, Giving Up, Past

• 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. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do - the actual act of writing - turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, People, Giving

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.26, Anchor

• One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Giving, Looks

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.12, Anchor

• 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

  Prayer, Character, Years

• I'm all over the place, up and down, scattered, withdrawing, trying to find some elusive sense of serenity." The world can't give that serenity. The world can't give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts." I hate that." I know. But the good news is that by the same token, the world can't take it away.

  Anne Lamott

  Hate, Heart, Giving

• 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.

  Anne Lamott

  Gratitude, Mean, Heart

  "Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers". Book by Anne Lamott, November 13, 2012.

• 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.

  Anne Lamott

  Space, Giving, Intuition

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.112, Anchor

• Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Giving, Surprise

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.26, Anchor

• The reason I never give up hope is because everything is so basically hopeless.

  Anne Lamott

  Giving Up, Hopeless, Reason

• The thing about light is that it really isn’t yours; it’s what you gather and shine back. And it gets more power from reflectiveness; if you sit still and take it in, it fills your cup, and then you can give it off yourself.

  Anne Lamott

  Light, Giving, Shining

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.201, Anchor

• Two things put me in the spirit to give. One is that I have come to think of everyone with whom I come into contast as a patient in the emergency room. I see a lot of gaping wounds and dazed expressions. Or, as Marianne Moore put it, "The world's an orphan's home." And this feels more true than almost anything else I know. But so many of us can be soothed by writing: think of how many times you have opened a book, read one line, and said, "Yes!" And I want to give people that feeling, too, of connection, communication.

  Anne Lamott

  Book, Communication, Home

• Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in a life-threatening way, that had caused me a long time ago to give up all hope of ever feeling good about having had her as a mother.

  Anne Lamott

  Cute, Mother, Giving Up

• If God was giving me a ham, I'd be crazy not to receive it. Maybe it was the ham of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

  Anne Lamott

  Crazy, Giving, Ham

  Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.10, Penguin

• It helps to resign as the controller of your fate. All that energy we expend to keep things running right is not what's keeping things running right. We're bugs struggling in the river, brightly visible to the trout below. With that fact in mind, people like me make up all these rules to give us the illusion that we are in charge. I need to say to myself, they're not needed, hon. Just take in the buggy pleasures. Be kind to the others, grab the fleck of riverweed, notice how beautifully your bug legs scull.

  Anne Lamott

  Inspirational, Running, Struggle

• Left to my own devices, would I trade this for firm thighs, fewer wrinkles, a better memory? On some days. That's why it's such a blessing I'm not left to my own devices. Because the truth is I have amazing friends and a deep faith in God, to whom I can turn. I have a cool kid, a sweet boyfriend, darling pets. I've learned to pay attention to life, and to listen. I'd give up all this for a flatter belly? Are you crazy?

  Anne Lamott

  Inspiring, Sweet, Giving Up

• When we're dealing with the people in our family - no matter how annoying or gross they may be, no matter how self-inflicted their suffering may appear, no matter how afflicted they are with ignorance, prejudice or nose hairs - we give from the deepest parts of ourselves.

  Anne Lamott

  Ignorance, Hair, Self

• Little by little, in telling Sam all these details, I got to see the bigger point of baseball, that it can give us back ourselves. We’re a crowd animal, a highly gregarious, communicative species, but the culture and the age and all the fear that fills our days have put almost everyone into little boxes, each of us all alone. But baseball, if we love it, gives us back our place in the crowd. It restores us.

  Anne Lamott

  Baseball, Animal, Giving

• I pray not to be such a whiny, self-obsessed baby, and give thanks that I am not quite as bad as I used to be (talk about miracles). Then something comes up, and I overreact and blame and sulk, and it feels like I haven't made any progress at all. But it turns out I'm less of a brat than before, and I hit the reset button much sooner, shake it off, and get my sense if humor back.

  Anne Lamott

  Baby, Self, Reset Button

• This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds.

  Anne Lamott

  Spiritual, Wind, Giving

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

• My mother might find a thin gold chain at the back of a drawer, wadded into an impossibly tight knot, and give it to me to untangle. It would have a shiny, sweaty smell, and excite me: Gold chains linked you to the great fairy tales and myths, to Arabia, and India; to the great weight of the world, but lighter than a feather.

  Anne Lamott

  Mother, Smell, Giving

• The clipping said forgiveness meant that God is for giving, and that we are here for giving too, and that to withold love or blessings is to be completely delusional.

  Anne Lamott

  Blessing, Giving, Delusional

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.121, Anchor

• I know that if I feel any deprivation or fear [about money], the solution is to give. The solution is to go find some mothers on the streets of San Raphael and give them tens and twenties and mail off another $50 to Doctors Without Borders to use for the refugees in Kosovo. Because I know that giving is the way we can feel abundant. Giving is the way that we fill ourselves up.... For me the way to fill up is through service and sharing and getting myself to give more than I feel comfortable giving.

  Anne Lamott

  Mother, Doctors, Giving

• Creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.

  Anne Lamott

  Mean, Writing, Creativity

  "Time Lost and Found". www.sunset.com.

• if you want to know how God feels about money, look at whom she gives it to.

  Anne Lamott

  God, Money, Giving

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.128, Anchor

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