Quotes from Anne Lamott

We're out there somewhere between the known and the unknown, trying to reel in both for a closer look.

There is ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness.

When I was a kid, our family used to watch 'Bonanza.' I really liked having a Sunday night TV ritual.

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.

Pay attention to the beauty surrounding you.

Alice Adams wrote a sweet note to me after my first novel came out when I was 26, and I was so blown away that I sent her a bunch of stamps by return mail. I have no idea what I was thinking. It was a star-struck impulse.

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?

Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors.

I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe over the last twenty-five years, that there's something to be said about keeping prayer simple. Help, Thanks, Wow.

The reason 'help' is such a great prayer is that God is the gift of desperation. When you're in despair, you're teachable.

Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I've seen prayers answered. But often, in my experiences, if you get what you pray for, you've really shortchanged yourself.

'Help' is a prayer that is always answered.

Anything you say from your heart to God is a prayer.

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.

Quiet, deep breath after any prayer is another form of Amen.

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.

Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we're invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence.

Getting into a new relationship is like pouring Miracle-Gro on your character defects.

I go to church every Sunday, which is like going to the gas station once a week and really, really filling up.

I've heard that our greatest cross to carry is ourselves - how gravely we fall short.

I have a very dark sense of humor. I swear. I have a very playful relationship with Jesus.

I don't have any romantic views of parenting. Every step of the way it's really hard. It's a dangerous world, physically and psychologically.

My mother might find a thin gold chain at the back of a drawer, wadded into an impossibly tight knot, and give it to me to untangle. It would have a shiny, sweaty smell, and excite me: Gold chains linked you to the great fairy tales and myths, to Arabia, and India; to the great weight of the world, but lighter than a feather.