Quote

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is.

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
Write
Warn
Stills
Publication
Still
Cracked
Published
Feels
Compelled
Writing
Encourage
Trying
Anyone
People
Hope

More quotes by Anne Lamott

Image
Some people seem to understand this - that life and change take time - but I am not one of those people.
Anne Lamott
Image
The truth of my experience is that we are all a lot more alike than we are different.
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
You must not inflict life on someone who will be resented.
Anne Lamott
Image
Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right.
Anne Lamott
Image
I see that children fill the existential hollowness many people feel that when we have children, we know they will need us, and maybe love us, but we don't have a clue how hard it is going to be.
Anne Lamott
Image
You want to give me chocolate and flowers? That would be great. I love them both. I just don't want them out of guilt, and I don't want them if you're not going to give them to all the people who helped mother our children.
Anne Lamott
Image
I suspect that he was a child who thought differently than his peers, who may have had serious conversations with grown-ups, who as a young person, like me, accepted being alone quite a lot. I think that this sort of person often becomes either a writer or a career criminal.
Anne Lamott
Image
All these people keep waxing sentimental about how fabulously well I am doing as a mother, how competent I am, but I feel inside like when you're first learning to put nail polish on your right hand with your left. You can do it, but it doesn't look all that great around the cuticles.
Anne Lamott
Image
Learning to love back is the hardest part of being alive.
Anne Lamott
Image
My natural tendency is to complicate everything--and then to spray words and ideas onto everything afterwards. I've had to develop the habit of keeping things simple.
Anne Lamott
Image
Prayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. (In fact, these are probably the best possible conditions under which to pray.) Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.
Anne Lamott
Image
My gratitude for good writing is unbounded I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean.
Anne Lamott
Image
I am not writing to try and convert people to fundamental Christianity. I am just trying to share my experience, strength and hope, that someone who is as messed up and neurotic and scarred and scared can be fully accepted by our dear Lord, no questions asked.
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
So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.
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 love silence. I seek and create it at every opportunity. I need it to work.
Anne Lamott
Image
You just have to keep getting out of your own way so that whatever it is that wants to be written can use you to write it.
Anne Lamott
Image
It's so great to be able to make people laugh, because this is so often how we get our selves back.
Anne Lamott