Anne Lamott Quotes

If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.

I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.

"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.

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.

The single most radical thing I know . . . is that I get to take care of myself.

"Here are the two best prayers I know: "Help me help me, help me," and "Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Growing up is not going nearly as efficiently as I had hoped.

Listen to your broccoli and it will tell you how to eat it.

We have all we need to come through. Against all odds, no matter what we’ve lost, no matter what messes we’ve made over time, no matter how dark the night, we offer and are offered kindness, soul, light, and food, which create breath and spaciousness, which create hope, sufficient unto the day.

You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.

I am learning slowly to bring my crazy pinball-machine mind back to this place...

I decided to go to the beach at San Quentin, and practice living as if today was one of the precious few left to me. What a concept.

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?

When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.

Try to write in a directly emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique. Don't be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.