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Anne Lamott Quotes

Powerful Anne Lamott for Daily Growth

My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land, and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear.

- Anne Lamott

Next, Rather, Held, Seemed

Nothing heals us like letting people know our scariest parts: When people listen to you cry and lament, and look at you with love, it's like they are holding the baby of you.

- Anne Lamott

Love, Like, Lament, Heals

I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother, and partly because of the extraordinary love of her best friends, and my own best friends' mothers, and from surrogates, many of whom were not women at all but gay men. I have loved them my entire life, even after their passing.

- Anne Lamott

Love, Woman, Own, Spite

My mother's eyes were large and brown, like my son's, but unlike Sam's, they were always frantic, like a hummingbird who can't quite find the flower but keeps jabbing around.

- Anne Lamott

Always, Like, Large, Brown

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

Strength, Lord, Christianity, Asked

I write because writing is the gift God has given me to help people in the world.

- Anne Lamott

Gift, I Write, Given, Write

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

Gardening, Dig, Over It, Handful

I like the desert for short periods of time, from inside a car, with the windows rolled up, and the doors locked. I prefer beach resorts with room service.

- Anne Lamott

Inside, Like, Prefer, Room Service

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

- Anne Lamott

Been, About, Am, Both Parties

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

Feather, Chains, Back, Lighter

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.

- Anne Lamott

Tide, Through, Other, Believers

I loved every second of Catholic church. I loved the sickly sweet rotting-pomegranate smells of the incense. I loved the overwrought altar, the birdbath of holy water, the votive candles; I loved that there was a poor box, the stations of the cross rendered in stained glass on the windows.

- Anne Lamott

Church, Stained, Candles, Altar

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

Simple, Big, Entitled, Spoiled

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

Suffering, Matter, Our, Self-Inflicted

I do not have deep theological understanding or opinion, but I do not read the Bible as the literal word of God.

- Anne Lamott

Deep, Bible, Read, Theological

I'm drawn to almost any piece of writing with the words 'divine love' and 'impeachment' in the first sentence. But I know the word 'divine' makes many progressive people run screaming for their cute little lives, and so one hesitates to use it.

- Anne Lamott

Love, Use, Almost, Progressive

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

- Anne Lamott

Reason, Never, Give, Hopeless

Evangelical Christians and I can sit down and talk one on one about how much we love Jesus, and yet I'm not carried in Christian bookstores.

- Anne Lamott

Love, Carried, Christians, Bookstores

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

Woke, Before, Francisco, None

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

- Anne Lamott

Voice, Perfectionism, Oppressor

I would seriously rather be in a long line at the DMV than eat with people I don't know.

- Anne Lamott

Seriously, Line, Rather, Long Line

I'm kind of a gossip hound, but watching the media whip the small fires into giant forest fires so that they can cover the result is infuriating.

- Anne Lamott

Small, Forest, Kind, Fires

I love readings and my readers, but the din of voices of the audience gives me stage fright, and the din of voices inside whisper that I am a fraud, and that the jig is up. Surely someone will rise up from the audience and say out loud that not only am I not funny and helpful, but I'm annoying, and a phony.

- Anne Lamott

Love, Stage Fright, Surely, Readers

No one tells you that your life is effectively over when you have a child: that you're never going to draw another complacent breath again... or that whatever level of hypochondria and rage you'd learned to repress and live with is going to seem like the good old days.

- Anne Lamott

Good, Another, Your, Complacent

The whistle is always waiting to be blown, and in some ways, it gets me to do better work.

- Anne Lamott

Better, Some, Always, Whistle

Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.

- Anne Lamott

Truth, Taste, Been, Odd

The Giants are usually described as rag tag, kind of a great garage sale team, and the Democrats are described as the Mommies to the Republican Daddies; and everyone hates the mommies, but wait, wait - I didn't intend to get into the pathos and thrill of being a Democratic Giants fan.

- Anne Lamott

Republican, Wait, Thrill, Intend

The women's movement burst forth when I was fifteen. That was when I began to believe that life might semi-work out after all. The cavalry had arrived. Women were starting to say that you got to tell the truth now, that you had to tell the truth if you were going to heal and have an authentic life.

- Anne Lamott

Believe, Tell, Had, Starting

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.

- Anne Lamott

Small, Been, Twenty-One, I Quit

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere... You don't have to dress up, for instance, and you can't hear them boo you right away.

- Anne Lamott

Dress, Boo, Instance, Much Attention

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