Quote

When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.

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
Laughing
Truths
Buoyancy
Instead
Heads
Exactness
Least
Shot
Clapping
Given
Shots
Restored
Even
Dancing
Absurdity
Make
Writers
Shake
Life
Laugh
Shakes
Along
Prose
Squashed

More quotes by Anne Lamott

Image
No one can appropriate God, goodness, the Bible or Jesus. It just seems that way.
Anne Lamott
Image
The mix in our rooms is so touching: the clutter and the cracks in the wall belie a bleakness or brokenness in our lives while photos and a few rare objects show our pride, our rare shining moments ... these rooms are future ruins
Anne Lamott
Image
I could become like that dyslexic agnostic in the old joke - the one who lies in bed and tries to figure out if his dog exists.
Anne Lamott
Image
if you want to know how God feels about money, look at whom she gives it to.
Anne Lamott
Image
Reading poetry and reading the great works of the canon that we were reading in the '60s and the '70s and '80s was mind altering.
Anne Lamott
Image
I love memoirs. They are probably my favorite literary form, along with biographies. The more confessional, the better. There is so, so, so little truth in the popular culture, and I am starved and grateful for any I can find.
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
It was not facing what life dealt that made you crazy, but rather trying to set life straight where it was unstraightenable.
Anne Lamott
Image
I'm all over the place, up and down, scattered, withdrawing, trying to find some elusive sense of serenity. The world can't give that serenity. The world can't give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts. I hate that. I know. But the good news is that by the same token, the world can't take it away.
Anne Lamott
Image
...music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way.
Anne Lamott
Image
There is nothing as sweet as a comeback, when you are down and out, about to lose, and out of time.
Anne Lamott
Image
Rule 1: When all else fails, follow instructions. And Rule 2: Don't be an asshole.
Anne Lamott
Image
I used to love to untangle chains when I was a child. I had thin, busy fingers, and I never gave up. Perhaps there was a psychiatric component to my concentration but like much of my psychic damage, this worked to everyone's advantage.
Anne Lamott
Image
There is a door we all want to walk through and writing can help you find it and open it.
Anne Lamott
Image
I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.
Anne Lamott
Image
I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and save the world. You sent money to the Red Cross, you registered people to vote, you marched in rallies, stood in vigils, picked up litter.
Anne Lamott
Image
only grieving can heal grief the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it.
Anne Lamott
Image
There are moments when I am writing when I think that if other people knew how I felt right now, they’d burn me at the stake for feeling so good, so full, so much intense pleasure.
Anne Lamott
Image
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.
Anne Lamott
Image
I've always understood that meditation had to be part of - or was part of the natural path and so I've always sort of dabbled in it.
Anne Lamott