Quote

The real payoff is the writing itself, that a day when you have gotten your work done is a good day, that total dedication is the point.

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
Good
Dedication
Gotten
Total
Point
Done
Real
Writing
Work
Payoff

More quotes by Anne Lamott

Image
Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend.
Anne Lamott
Image
I've seen prayers answered. But often, in my experiences, if you get what you pray for, you've really shortchanged yourself.
Anne Lamott
Image
If you have a problem you can solve by throwing money at it, you don't have a very interesting problem.
Anne Lamott
Image
The solution is always spiritual, and it almost never has anything to do with the problem ... laughter is carbonated holiness.
Anne Lamott
Image
Sometimes I think God loves the ones who most desperately ache and are most desperately lost - his or her wildest, most messed-up children - the way you'd ache and love a screwed-up rebel daughter in juvenile hall.
Anne Lamott
Image
We can't understand when we're 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
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
Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors.
Anne Lamott
Image
Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it more or less together.
Anne Lamott
Image
I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen.
Anne Lamott
Image
I was usually filled with a sense of something like shame until I'd remember that wonderful line of Blake's- that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love- and I would take a long deep breath and force these words out of my strangulated throat: Thank you.
Anne Lamott
Image
A big heart is both a clunky and a delicate thing it doesn't protect itself and it doesn't hide. It stands out, like a baby's fontanel, where you can see the soul pulse through.
Anne Lamott
Image
No is a complete sentence.
Anne Lamott
Image
Any plot you impose on your characters will be onomatopoetic: PLOT. I say don't worry about plot. Worry about the characters. Let what they say or do reveal who they are, and be involved in their lives, and keep asking yourself, Now what happens? The development of relationship creates plot.
Anne Lamott
Image
I loved every second of Catholic church. I loved the sickly sweet rotting-pomegranate smells of the incense. I loved the overwrought altar, the birdbath of holy water, the votive candles I loved that there was a poor box, the stations of the cross rendered in stained glass on the windows.
Anne Lamott
Image
I honestly think that in order to be a writer you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?
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
I've known for years that resentments don't hurt the person we resent, but they do hurt us.
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
There is nothing you can buy, achieve, own, or rent that can fill up that hunger inside for a sense of fulfillment and wonder.
Anne Lamott