Quote

Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

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
Letting
Mess
Return
Faith
Noticing
Light
Discomfort
Returns
Includes
Emptiness

More quotes by Anne Lamott

Image
Joy is the best makeup. But a little lipstick is a close runner-up.
Anne Lamott
Image
Shirley Jackson said that a confused reader is an antagonistic reader, and I live by that. It's okay to start anywhere, and to let yourself write a big sloppy overly-detailed first draft. You just jump in, knowing that the water will be cold at first, but no one is making you swim.
Anne Lamott
Image
Dialogue that is written in dialect is very tiring to read. If you can do it brilliantly, fine. If other writers read your work and rave about your use of dialect, go for it. But be positive that you do it well, because otherwise it is a lot of work to read short stories or novels that are written in dialect. It makes our necks feel funny.
Anne Lamott
Image
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
Image
...It really IS easier to experience spiritual connection when your life is in the process of coming apart.
Anne Lamott
Image
I have been somebody who has not written a great deal about the truth of my family's life.
Anne Lamott
Image
My deepest belief is that to live as if we're dying can set us free. Dying people teach you to pay attention and to forgive and not to sweat the small things.
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
You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself.
Anne Lamott
Image
I get thirsty people glasses of water, even if that thirsty person is just me.
Anne Lamott
Image
Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?
Anne Lamott
Image
You are going to have to give and give and give, or there's no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.
Anne Lamott
Image
I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe over the last twenty-five years, that there's something to be said about keeping prayer simple. Help, Thanks, Wow.
Anne Lamott
Image
...most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of the people around you.
Anne Lamott
Image
Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting.
Anne Lamott
Image
... one of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people. [p. 65]
Anne Lamott
Image
They always threw their arms around and hugged me while crying our Yiddish endearments. Yet none of them believed in God. They believed in social justice, good works, Israel, and Bette Midler. I was nearly thirty before I met a religious Jew.
Anne Lamott
Image
Grace arrived, like the big, loopy stitches with which a grandmotherly stranger might baste your hem temporarily.
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
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