Quote

When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens like one of those fluted Japanese blossoms, flimsy and spastic, bright and warm. This almost always seems to happen in community.

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
Seems
Expectations
Floats
Sometimes
Image
Expectation
Always
Happen
Japanese
Wriggling
Like
Almost
Opens
Spastic
Community
Onto
Flimsy
Faith
Bright
Pinned
Hope
Forth
Shiny
Happens
Warm
Blossoms

More quotes by 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
Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.
Anne Lamott
Image
After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid.
Anne Lamott
Image
Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back.
Anne Lamott
Image
Radical self-care is quantum, and radiates out into the atmosphere, like a little fresh air. It is a huge gift to the world. When people respond by saying, “Well, isn’t she full of herself,” smile obliquely, like Mona Lisa, and make both of you a nice cup of tea.
Anne Lamott
Image
Summer nearly does me in every year. It's too hot and the light is unforgiving and the days go on way too long.
Anne Lamott
Image
Her purse was a weight, ballast it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away.
Anne Lamott
Image
If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.
Anne Lamott
Image
But it was the singing that pulled me in and split me wide open.
Anne Lamott
Image
My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable
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
You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories.
Anne Lamott
Image
Mostly what happens in the novels never happened in real life.
Anne Lamott
Image
Being on a book tour is like being on the seesaw when you're a little kid. The excitement is in having someone to play with, and in rising up in the air, but then you're at the mercy of those holding you down, and if it's your older brother, or Paul Wolfowitz, they leap up, so that you crash down and get hurt.
Anne Lamott
Image
How do you begin? The answer is simple: you decide to.
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
The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later.
Anne Lamott
Image
I've always thought I could use my brain and my heart to jockey everyone around to the good. But life is not jockeyable. When you try, you make people infinitely crazier than they already were, including or especially yourself.
Anne Lamott
Image
The thing about light is that it really isn’t yours it’s what you gather and shine back. And it gets more power from reflectiveness if you sit still and take it in, it fills your cup, and then you can give it off yourself.
Anne Lamott
Image
At our most primitive we are storytellers and dancers.
Anne Lamott