Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Live
Forgiving
Things
Dying
People
Pay
Teach
Small
Belief
Deepest
Attention
Sweat
Free
Forgive

More quotes by Anne Lamott

Image
I’m probably just as good a mother as the next repressed, obsessive-compulsive paranoiac.
Anne Lamott
Image
I feel incredibly successful. I make a living as a writer and am able to help support a big family, my church, my bleeding-heart causes.
Anne Lamott
Image
What if we never 'get over' certain deaths, or our childhoods? What if the idea that we should have by now, or will, is a great palace lie? What if we're not supposed to? What if it takes a life time...?
Anne Lamott
Image
Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper.
Anne Lamott
Image
There is ecstasy in paying attention.
Anne Lamott
Image
The reason I never give up hope is because everything is so basically hopeless.
Anne Lamott
Image
You are going to love some of your characters because they are you or some facet of you, and you are going to hate some of your characters for the same reason.
Anne Lamott
Image
Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.
Anne Lamott
Image
And you try to quiet your mind so you can hear.
Anne Lamott
Image
The mix in our rooms is so touching: the clutter and the cracks in the wall belie a bleakness or brokenness in our lives while photos and a few rare objects show our pride, our rare shining moments ... these rooms are future ruins
Anne Lamott
Image
Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.
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
Try to write in a directly emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique. Don't be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.
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 can never tell what I'm doing when I'm in the middle of publication because I have no confidence. I have terrible self-esteem, along with boundless narcissism.
Anne Lamott
Image
If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there... When nothing new can get in, that's death.
Anne Lamott
Image
You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t.
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
Raising a child, whether or not it is yours, is like Nautilus of the heart and soul.
Anne Lamott
Image
Sometimes grace is a ribbon of mountain air that gets in through the cracks.
Anne Lamott