Quote

Left to my own devices, my first inclination is to mess in other people's lives. I secretly believe my whole family, and really the whole world, is my responsibility.

Anne Lamott

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Whole
Devices
Believe
Mess
Really
Responsibility
World
Family
People
Lives
Left
Firsts
Secretly
First
Inclination

More quotes by Anne Lamott

Image
Now she and I sit together in her room and eat chocolate, and I tell her that in a very long time when we both to go heaven, we should try to get chairs next to each other, close to the dessert table.
Anne Lamott
Image
My idea of everything going smoothly on an airplane is (a) that I not die in a slow-motion fiery crash or get stabbed to death by terrorists and (b) that none of the other passengers try to talk to me. All conversation should end at the moment the wheels leave the ground.
Anne Lamott
Image
Sometimes it feels like God has reached down and touched me, blessed me a thousand times over, and sometimes it all feels like a mean joke, like God's advisers are Muammar Qaddafi and Phyllis Schlafly.
Anne Lamott
Image
And yet, I do believe there is ultimately meaning in the chaos, and also in the doldrums. What I resist is not the truth but when people put a pretty bow on scary things instead of saying, 'This is a nightmare. I hate everything. I’m going to go hide in the garage.'
Anne Lamott
Image
I think drugs are part of the magical possibilities of youth and I wouldn't be here if I had continued with it.
Anne Lamott
Image
Publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is.
Anne Lamott
Image
The problem with God - or at any rate, one of the top five most annoying things about God - is that he or she rarely answers right away.
Anne Lamott
Image
I spent my whole life helping my mother carry around her psychic trunks like a bitter bellhop. So a great load was lifted when she died, and my life was much easier.
Anne Lamott
Image
It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.
Anne Lamott
Image
I've always thought I could use my brain and my heart to jockey everyone around to the good. But life is not jockeyable. When you try, you make people infinitely crazier than they already were, including or especially yourself.
Anne Lamott
Image
But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on.
Anne Lamott
Image
Toni Morrison said, The function of freedom is to free someone else, and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad that you did. Members of your family and other critics may wish you had kept your secrets. Oh, well, what are you going to do?
Anne Lamott
Image
I don't know much, but I understand how entirely doomed I am without God.
Anne Lamott
Image
Mattie sat at the table, obsessing, orbiting around herself. She was sick of her worried, hostile mind. It would have killed her long before, she felt, if it hadn't needed the transportation.
Anne Lamott
Image
And my fear of failure has been lifelong and deep. If you are what you do- and I think my parents may have accidentally given me this idea- and you do poorly, what then? It’s over you’re wiped out. All those prophecies you heard in the dark have come true, and people can see the real you, see what a schmendrick you are, what a fraud.
Anne Lamott
Image
I believe in listening to the - what calls you from your heart and your spirit and if you do it badly, like learning to dance, you do it badly or you're going to kick yourself when you grow old and you meant to do it.
Anne Lamott
Image
The best thing about being an artist, instead of a madman or someone who writes letters to the editor, is that you get to engage in satisfying work. Even if you never publish a word, you have something important to pour yourself into.
Anne Lamott
Image
There is ecstasy in paying attention.
Anne Lamott
Image
The stuff I write about is pretty universal, the things my closest friends and I talk about - our anxiety about being here on this scary planet, during these scary times, as vulnerable as kittens, having lost so many people I couldn't live without.
Anne Lamott
Image
You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.
Anne Lamott