Anne Lamott Quotes - Page 21

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• 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

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• Now. Maybe you think it is arrogant or self centered, or ridiculous for me to believe that God bothered to wiggle a cheap bolt out of my new used car because he or she needed to keep me away for a few days until just the moment when my old friend most needed me to help her mother move into whatever comes next. Maybe nothing conscious helped to stall me so that I would be there when I could be most useful. Or maybe it did. I’ll never know for sure. And anyway, it doesn’t really matter.

  Anne Lamott

  Mother, Believe, Moving

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.102, Anchor

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• Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Character, Needs

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• I took notes on the people around me, in my town, in my family, in my memory. I took notes on my own state of mind, my grandiosity, the low self-esteem. I wrote down the funny stuff I overheard. I learned to be like a ship's rat, veined ears trembling, and I learned to scribble it all down.

  Anne Lamott

  Memories, Self Esteem, People

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

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• I woke up full of hate and fear the day before the most recent peace march in San Francisco. This was disappointing: I'd hoped to wake up feeling somewhere between Virginia Woolf and Wavy Gravy.

  Anne Lamott

  Hate, Virginia, San Francisco

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• I'd like to learn to meditate with more enthusiasm. I can sit down and get quiet for 20 minutes, but it just has not been a part of my Christianity at all.

  Anne Lamott

  Down And, Enthusiasm, Quiet

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• I've heard people say that God is the gift of desperation, and there's a lot to be said for having really reached a bottom where you've run out of any more good ideas or plans for everybody else's behavior; or how to save and fix and rescue; or just get out of a huge mess, possibly of your own creation.

  Anne Lamott

  Running, Ideas, People

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• If your wife locks you out of the house, you don't have a problem with your door.

  Anne Lamott

  Doors, Wife, House

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.178, Anchor

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• It was simple reality - most competitive tennis players in my day were privileged, spoiled, entitled and white. Also, many of them were beautiful, fit, tan and of good stock - great big hair and white teeth and long legs. Then there were the rest of us.

  Anne Lamott

  Beautiful, Simple, Player

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• 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?

  Anne Lamott

  Jesus, Kissing, People

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• When we did art with the kids, the demons would lie down.

  Anne Lamott

  Art, Lying, Kids

  Anne Lamott (2006). “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith”, p.68, Penguin

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• 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

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• Mothering has been the richest experience of my life, but I am still opposed to Mother's Day. It perpetuates the dangerous idea that all parents are somehow superior to non-parents.

  Anne Lamott

  Mother, Dangerous Ideas, Parent

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• 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.

  Anne Lamott

  Crazy, Thinking, Dots

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

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• ...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.

  Anne Lamott

  Discovery, Self, Parent

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

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Religious, Rights, Justice

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• 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.

  Anne Lamott

  Fighter, Shame, Sand

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

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• Can you imagine the hopelessness of trying to live a spiritual life when you’re secretly looking up at the skies not for illumination or direction, but to gauge, miserably, the odds of rain?

  Anne Lamott

  Spiritual, Rain, Odds

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.204, Anchor

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• The earth is rocky and full of roots; it's clay, and it seems doomed and polluted, but you dig little holes for the ugly shriveled bulbs, throw in a handful of poppy seeds, and cover it all over, and you know you'll never see it again - it's death and clay and shrivel, and your hands are nicked from the rocks, your nails black with soil.

  Anne Lamott

  Rocks, Hands, Roots

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• E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.

  Anne Lamott

  Book, Reading, Minutes

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• It is a violation of trust to use your kids as caulking for the cracks in you.

  Anne Lamott

  Kids, Cracks, Use

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• You have to be a warrior and say, "Maybe it's everyone else's system, but it's not mine." (from her recent interview here, on Goodreads)

  Anne Lamott

  Warrior, Interviews, Goodreads

  Goodreads Interview, www.goodreads.com. March, 2012.

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• Now she and I sit together in her room and eat chocolate, and I tell her that in a very long time when we both to go heaven, we should try to get chairs next to each other, close to the dessert table.

  Anne Lamott

  Long, Heaven, Chocolate

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.133, Anchor

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• 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

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• I am not writing to try and convert people to fundamental Christianity. I am just trying to share my experience, strength and hope, that someone who is as messed up and neurotic and scarred and scared can be fully accepted by our dear Lord, no questions asked.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Dear Lord, People

  "'Like a puppy in a Christmas stocking'". Interview With Susan Olasky, world.wng.org. September 20, 2003.

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