Quote

Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don't worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable worry about being absent or fraudulent.

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
Absent
Writing
Sentimental
Things
Vulnerability
Center
Straight
Toward
Unavailable
Emotional
Fraudulent
Worry
Appearing

More quotes by Anne Lamott

Image
My family tends to be pretty alcoholic and drug-addicted.
Anne Lamott
Image
A priest friend of mine has cautioned me away from the standard God of our childhoods, who loves you and guides you and then, if you are bad, roasts you: God as a high school principal in a gray suit who never remembered your name but is always leafing unhappily through your files.
Anne Lamott
Image
This is our goal as writers, I think to help others have this sense of--please forgive me--wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds.
Anne Lamott
Image
You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as you hear them, as they come to you. You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist.
Anne Lamott
Image
Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all. Laugh, rest, slow down.
Anne Lamott
Image
My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable
Anne Lamott
Image
It was simple reality - most competitive tennis players in my day were privileged, spoiled, entitled and white. Also, many of them were beautiful, fit, tan and of good stock - great big hair and white teeth and long legs. Then there were the rest of us.
Anne Lamott
Image
There is ecstasy in paying attention.
Anne Lamott
Image
When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens.
Anne Lamott
Image
Certainty is missing the point entirely.
Anne Lamott
Image
Sometimes I think that Jesus watches my neurotic struggles, and shakes his head and grips his forehead and starts tossing back mojitos.
Anne Lamott
Image
Shirley Jackson said that a confused reader is an antagonistic reader, and I live by that. It's okay to start anywhere, and to let yourself write a big sloppy overly-detailed first draft. You just jump in, knowing that the water will be cold at first, but no one is making you swim.
Anne Lamott
Image
I like to read away as much of the afternoon as possible, until real life rears its ugly head.
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
What if we gave fifty percent of our discretionary budget to the world’s poor and then counted on the moral power of that action to protect us?
Anne Lamott
Image
I was raised in a family where none of us ever raised a voice, so there was no room to express feelings of rage or even unabashed joy - a little bashed joy, here or there, or being mildly disgruntled.
Anne Lamott
Image
No matter what circumstances, it's hard to be a parent and maintain a sense of self and identity in the world.
Anne Lamott
Image
These are pictures of the people in my family where we look like the most awkward and desperate folk you ever saw, poster children for the human condition.
Anne Lamott
Image
One line of dialogue that rings true reveals character in a way that pages of description can't.
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