Quote

Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong. It is no wonder if we sometimes tend to take ourselves perhaps a bit too seriously.

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
Writing
Grows
Wake
Make
Heard
Seriously
Lives
Tend
Sense
Perhaps
Deepest
Need
Grow
Endeavor
Take
Bits
Desperate
Sometimes
Pretty
Belong
Needs
Wonder
Visible

More quotes by Anne Lamott

Image
Slowly, after dozens of rejection slips and failures and false starts and postponed dreams - what Langston Hughes called dreams deferred - I stepped onto the hallowed ground of being a published novelist, and then 15 years later, I even started to make real money.
Anne Lamott
Image
You know how I always say that laughter is carbonated holiness? Well, Robin was the ultimate proof of that, and bubbles are spirit made visible.
Anne Lamott
Image
Rule 1: When all else fails, follow instructions. And Rule 2: Don't be an asshole.
Anne Lamott
Image
You know, we're often ashamed of asking for so much help because it seems selfish or petty or narcissistic, but I think, if there's a God -- and I believe there is -- that God is there to help. That's what God's job is.
Anne Lamott
Image
It's better to be kind than to be right.
Anne Lamott
Image
Peace is joy at rest. Joy is peace on its feet. quoting her pastor in Salon, April 25, 2003
Anne Lamott
Image
Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in a life-threatening way, that had caused me a long time ago to give up all hope of ever feeling good about having had her as a mother.
Anne Lamott
Image
Hope begins in the dark.
Anne Lamott
Image
There is ecstasy in paying attention.
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
Listen to your broccoli and it will tell you how to eat it.
Anne Lamott
Image
Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back.
Anne Lamott
Image
To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer always tries, I think, to be a part of a solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.
Anne Lamott
Image
You have to keep taking the next necessary stitch, and the next one, and the next. Without stitches, you just have rags. And we are not rags.
Anne Lamott
Image
Mothers are supposed to listen and, afterward, to respond with some wisdom and perspective, but these things were not my mother's strong suit.
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
E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.
Anne Lamott
Image
The worst time in any writer's life is the two months before publication. ALL writers become mental and pathetic, even those of devout faith, who have some psychological healing to lean up against, and gorgeous lives. All writers think that this time, the jig is up, and they will be exposed as frauds.
Anne Lamott
Image
I'd like to learn to meditate with more enthusiasm. I can sit down and get quiet for 20 minutes, but it just has not been a part of my Christianity at all.
Anne Lamott
Image
You want to protect your child from pain, and what you get instead is life, and grace and though theologians insist that grace is freely given, the truth is that sometimes you pay for it through the nose. And you can't pay your child's way.
Anne Lamott