Anne Lamott

“Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.”

“Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.”

“All parents are an embarrassment to their kids. Often, grandparents are the relief. Kids don't have to resist you.”

“Some aching beauty comes with huge loss, although maybe not right away, when it would be helpful. Life is a very powerful force, despite the constant discouragement. So if you are a person with connections to life, a few tendrils eventually break through the sidewalk of loss, and you notice them, maybe space out studying them for a few moments, or maybe they tickle you into movement and response, if only because you have to scratch your nose.”

“Alice Adams wrote a sweet note to me after my first novel came out when I was 26, and I was so blown away that I sent her a bunch of stamps by return mail. I have no idea what I was thinking. It was a star-struck impulse.”

“I watched him carefully. He was making art because he has to, and because he's brave enough to try and make contact, right there on the edge of madness, where he dreams.”

“We can see Spirit made visible when people are kind to one another, especially when it's a really busy person, like you, taking care of a needy, annoying, neurotic person, like you.”

“I am skittish about relationships, as most of the marriages I've seen up close have been ruinous for one or both parties.”

“Hope is not logical. It always comes as a surprise, just when you think all hope is lost. Hope is the cousin to grief, and both take time: you can’t short-circuit grief, or emptiness, and you can’t patch it up with your bicycle tire tube kit. You have to take the next right action.”

“These two things are almost all I want, but unfortunately, neither one is my strong suit. I am very strong on blame, and wish this were one of God's values, but trust, surrender? Letting go, forgiveness? Maybe just after a period of prayer, but then when the mood passes and real life rears its ugly head again? Not so much. I hate this, the fact that life is usually Chutes and Ladders, with no guaranteed gains.I cannot will myself into having these qualities, so I have to pray for them more often, if I want to be happy. I have to create the habit, just as I had to do with daily writing, and flossing.”

“...most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of the people around you.”

“Lies cannot nourish or protect you. Only freedom from fear, freedom from lies, can make us beautiful, and keep us safe.”

“God can't clean the house of you when you're still in it.”

“If you don't believe in God, it may help to remember this great line of Geneen Roth's: that awareness is learning to keep yourself company. And then learn to be more compassionate company, as if you were somebody you are fond of and wish to encourage. I doubt that you would read a close friend's early efforts and, in his or her presence, roll your eyes and snicker. I doubt that you would pantomime sticking your finger down your throat. I think you might say something along the lines of, 'Good for you. We can work out some of the problems later, but for now, full steam ahead!”

“I quit my last real job, as a writer at a magazine, when I was twenty-one. That was the moment when I lost my place of prestige on the fast track, and slowly, millimeter by millimeter, I started to get found, to discover who I had been born to be, instead of the impossibly small package, all tied up tightly in myself, that I had agreed to be.”

“Resentments make even the best of us feel superior.”

“A whole lot of us believers, of all different religions, are ready to turn back the tide of madness by walking together, in both the dark and the light - in other words, through life - registering voters as we go, and keeping the faith.”

“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.”

“When I was a kid, our family used to watch 'Bonanza.' I really liked having a Sunday night TV ritual.”

“Mother's Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path.”