Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott

Author, Essayist

Anne Lamott is a renowned author and speaker, celebrated for her insightful books on faith, writing, and the human experience, including 'Bird by Bird.'

Writing People Thinking Children Believe Heart
Born
April 10, 1954
Quotes
647
Rank
#395

Quote collection

Anne Lamott quotes (page 11 of 33)

647 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
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"Jealousy always has been my cross, the weakness and woundedness in me that has most often caused me to feel ugly and unlovable, like the Bad Seed. I’ve had many years of recovery and therapy, years filled with intimate and devoted friendships, yet I still struggle. I know that when someone gets a big slice of pie, it doesn’t mean there’s less for me. In fact, I know that there isn’t even a pie, that there’s plenty to go around, enough food and love and air. But I don’t believe it for a second. I secretly believe there’s a pie. I will go to my grave brandishing my fork."

Believe Struggle Recovery
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"I don't write about the intimate details of my cousins and aunts and uncles, and my mother and my father because it's not right to, for me."

Mother Cousin Uncles
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"I just can't get over how much babies cry. I really had no idea what I was getting into. To tell you the truth, I thought it would be more like getting a cat."

Baby Cat Ideas
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"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."

Mother Doctors Giving
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"After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid."

Kids Soul Middle
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"I've known for years that resentments don't hurt the person we resent, but they do hurt us."

Hurt Years Resentment
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"Dancing almost always turns out to be a good idea."

Dance Ideas Dancing
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"Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of."

Real Writing Caring
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"The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out."

Writing Sheep Needs
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"If you have a body, you are entitled to the full range of feelings. It comes with the package."

Feelings Body Range
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"Sometimes grace works like water wings when you feel you are sinking."

Wings Water Grace
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"Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper."

Patience Mind Trying
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"My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words; about the margins, where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found. In a library, you could find miracles and truth and you might find something that would make you laugh so hard that you get shushed, in the friendliest way."

Space Laughing Parent
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"We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this."

Writing Men Important
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"I worry that Jesus drinks himself to sleep when he hears me talk like this."

Jesus Sleep Worry
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"The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it...I would discover that it hadn't washed me away."

Feelings Depth Surprise
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"On the spiritual path, all the dreck and misery is transformed, maybe not that same day, but still transformed into spiritual fuel or insight."

Spiritual Fuel Path
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"We cheated, you and me, and someone noticed. I noticed you; someone else noticed me. It hurts us. That's not so bad. So many people cheat. Everywhere on every level. Everyone's cheated. I'm just saying that you don't need to see yourself as a cheater. Because that's not who you are. You're someone who cheated. There's a difference, and you should try to get that difference, or that's who you'll grow up to be."

Hurt Growing Up Cheater
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