Quote

I became a Christian before I got sober. So I was a drunk, bulimic Christian.

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
Bulimic
Sober
Drunk
Became
Christian

More quotes by Anne Lamott

Image
Rule 1: When all else fails, follow instructions. And Rule 2: Don't be an asshole.
Anne Lamott
Image
We want a sense that an important character, like a narrator, is reliable. We want to believe that a character is not playing ages or being coy or being manipulative, but is telling the truth to the best of his or her ability...We do not wish to be crudely manipulated...We want to be massaged by a masseur, not whapped by a carpet beater.
Anne Lamott
Image
Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, 'Well, isn't that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I'll figure out what we're going to do about your stuff.
Anne Lamott
Image
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.
Anne Lamott
Image
My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words about the margins, where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found. In a library, you could find miracles and truth and you might find something that would make you laugh so hard that you get shushed, in the friendliest way.
Anne Lamott
Image
The difference between a writer who toughs it out and one who doesn't is that you push through the parts where you know that you've just written seven pages when all you're looking for is one paragraph.
Anne Lamott
Image
When I was a kid, our family used to watch 'Bonanza.' I really liked having a Sunday night TV ritual.
Anne Lamott
Image
Why couldn't Jesus command us to obsess over everything, to try to control and manipulate people, to try not to breathe at all, or to pay attention, stomp away to brood when people annoy us, and then eat a big bag of Hershey's Kisses in bed?
Anne Lamott
Image
No one can appropriate God, goodness, the Bible or Jesus. It just seems that way.
Anne Lamott
Image
The stuff I write about is pretty universal, the things my closest friends and I talk about - our anxiety about being here on this scary planet, during these scary times, as vulnerable as kittens, having lost so many people I couldn't live without.
Anne Lamott
Image
But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on.
Anne Lamott
Image
Anything you say from your heart to God is a prayer. But why is rarely a useful question. When Job keeps asking God why he has had such loss and suffering, God says, You wouldn't understand. I always want to know why, and I almost never have a good answer.
Anne Lamott
Image
To be great, art has to point somewhere.
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
I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.
Anne Lamott
Image
I didn't write about my mother much in the third year after she died. I was still trying to get my argument straight: When her friends or our relatives wondered why I was still so hard on her, I could really lay out the case for what it had been like to be raised by someone who had loathed herself, her husband, even her own name.
Anne Lamott
Image
We all often feel like we are pulling teeth, even those writers whose prose ends up being the most natural and fluid. The right words and sentences just do not come pouring out like ticker tape most of the time.
Anne Lamott
Image
It was not facing what life dealt that made you crazy, but rather trying to set life straight where it was unstraightenable.
Anne Lamott
Image
We all have the dark, ignorant shadow inside us. I have worked endlessly to reveal it and heal it in me, but of course there's some primitive weird stuff in me. The Tea Party is about exhorting white supremacy, though, so I've had a tiny bit of trouble experiencing sympathy.
Anne Lamott
Image
Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Anne Lamott