Quotes by

Anne Lamott

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

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you dont give up. – Anne Lamott

We cant understand when were pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here, on Earth, for a time – like the Egyptians with their pyramids, only with children. – Anne Lamott

You can safely assume that youve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. – Anne Lamott

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

When were 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

The first holy truth in God 101 is that men and women of true faith have always had to accept the mystery of Gods identity and love and ways. I hate that, but its the truth. – Anne Lamott

Some people wont go the extra mile, and then on their birthday, when no one makes a fuss, they feel neglected and bitter. – Anne Lamott

The worst part about celebrating another birthday is the shock that youre only as well as you are. – Anne Lamott

If you dont die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young. – Anne Lamott

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere… You dont have to dress up, for instance, and you cant hear them boo you right away. – Anne Lamott

We must not inflict life on children who will be resented we must not inflict unwanted children on society. – Anne Lamott

I got a lot of things that society had promised would make me whole and fulfilled – all the things that the culture tells you from preschool on will quiet the throbbing anxiety inside you – stature, the respect of colleagues, maybe even a kind of low-grade fame. – Anne Lamott

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

When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens. – Anne Lamott

Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in a life-threatening way, that had caused me a long time ago to give up all hope of ever feeling good about having had her as a mother. – Anne Lamott

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

Some people seem to understand this – that life and change take time – but I am not one of those people. – Anne Lamott

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

Pay attention to the beauty surrounding you. – Anne Lamott