Quotes from Anne Lamott

Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)

Yet not matter how much we recycle, believe in our Priuses, and abide by local laws, we see that our beauty is being destroyed, crushed by greed and cruel stupidity.

I love to be, and so often am, right.

In general, though, there's no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.

even though you know that your manuscript is not perfect and you'd hoped for so much more, but if you also know that there is simply no more steam in the pressure cooker and that it's the very best you can do for now—well? I think this means that you are done.

The good news is that God has such low standards, and reaches out to those of us who are often not lovable and offers us a chance to come back in from the storm of drama and toxic thoughts.

There is a real skill to hearing all those words that real people—and your characters—say and to recording what you have heard—and the latter is or should be more interesting and concise and even more true than what was actually said.

Writing involves seeing people suffer and, as Robert Stone once put it, finding some meaning therein. But you can't do that if you're not respectful. If you look at people and just see sloppy clothes or rich clothes, you're going to get them wrong.

God isn't there to take away our suffering or our pain but to fill it with his or her presence

Who knows, maybe those two rogue leaders, Gandhi and Jesus, were right—a loving response changes the people who would beat the shit out of you, including yourself, of course. Their way, of the heart, makes everything bigger. Decency and goodness are subversively folded into the craziness, like caramel ribbons into ice cream. Otherwise, it's about me, and my bile ducts, and how unique I am and how I've suffered. And that is what hell is like.

Your job is to present clearly your viewpoint, your line of vision. Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense.

All you can give us is what life is about from your point of view. You are not going to be able to give us the plans to the submarine. Life is not a submarine. There are no plans.

I honestly think in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?

In good fiction, we have one eye on the hero or the good guys and a fascinated eye on the bad guys, who may be a lot more interesting. The plot leads all of these people (and us) into dark woods where we find, against all odds, a woman or a man with the compass, and it still points true north. That's the miracle, and it's astonishing. This shaft of light, sometimes only a glimmer, both defines and thwarts the darkness.

This is a hard planet, and we're a vulnerable species. And all I can do is pray: Help. When

When what we see catches us off guard, and when we write it as realistically and openly as possible, it offers hope.

Why am I here? To love this dumb old day. Ugh. If I could only remember this.

it may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.

when people don't have free access to books, then communities are like radios without batteries.

The sky was blue and cloudless, everything was in bloom, and she wore a little lavender cotton cap. She was doing very well that day, except that she was dying.

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up. I

Sometimes I could not tell you exactly why, especially when it feels pointless and pitiful, like Sisyphus with cash-flow problems. Other

Say to yourself in the kindest possible way, Look, honey, all we're going to for now is to write a description of the river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the club, or the first time the man sees the woman he will marry. That is all we are going to do for now. We are just going to take this bird by bird. But we are going to finish this one short assignment.

Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward. I