Quote

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.

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
Tell
Stories
Better
Wanted
Everything
Warmly
Writing
Behaved
People
Happened
Write

More quotes by 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
Every woman's path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is, sadly, true. An unhealthy mother's love is withering.
Anne Lamott
Image
The reason I never give up hope is because everything is so basically hopeless.
Anne Lamott
Image
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
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
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
Anne Lamott
Image
I don't have very sophisticated taste in music. I listen to a lot of folk music. I like reggae.
Anne Lamott
Image
If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.
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
You have to be a warrior and say, Maybe it's everyone else's system, but it's not mine. (from her recent interview here, on Goodreads)
Anne Lamott
Image
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
Image
A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It's a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of truth, and then you give your heart to expressing it clearly.
Anne Lamott
Image
I read the same amount of nonfiction and fiction.
Anne Lamott
Image
A hundred years from now? All new people.
Anne Lamott
Image
My idea of absolute happiness is to be in bed on a rainy day, with my blankie, my cat, and my dog.
Anne Lamott
Image
Dancing almost always turns out to be a good idea.
Anne Lamott
Image
The miracle is that we are here, that no matter how undone we’ve been the night before, we wake up every morning and are still here. It is phenomenal just to be.
Anne Lamott
Image
I spend most of my time alone, because I so value and thrive in the quiet. Heaven.
Anne Lamott
Image
Life does not seem to present itself to me for my convenience, to box itself up nicely so I can write about it with wisdom and a point to make before putting it on a shelf somewhere.
Anne Lamott
Image
Pay attention to the beauty surrounding you.
Anne Lamott