Quotes from Anne Lamott

The opposite of faith is not doubt: It is certainty. It is madness. You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do.

I wish I had thrown out the bathroom scale at age 16. Weighing yourself every morning is like waking up and asking Dick Cheney to validate your sense of inner worth.

But you don't always get what you want;,you get what you get

I'm very successful, but there are 50,000 general interest books published every year. If you don't want to read mine, there are others.

Some people won't go the extra mile, and then on their birthday, when no one makes a fuss, they feel neglected and bitter.

There are really places in your heart that you don't know exist until you love a child.

I'm much calmer as I get older, but I'm still just as capable of getting that strung-out stressed-out feeling of mental and spiritual unwellness.

All wise people say the same thing; that you are deserving of love, and that it's all here now, everything you need. When you pray, you are not starting the conversation from scratch, just remembering to plug back into a conversation that's always in progress.

My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean.

I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen.

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere... You don't have to dress up, for instance, and you can't hear them boo you right away.

You want to give me chocolate and flowers? That would be great. I love them both. I just don't want them out of guilt, and I don't want them if you're not going to give them to all the people who helped mother our children.

No one is more sentimentalized in America than mothers on Mother's Day, but no one is more often blamed for the culture's bad people and behavior.

Think of a fine painter attempting to capture an inner vision, beginning with one corner of the canvas, painting what he thinks should be there, not quite pulling it off, covering it over with white paint, and trying again, each time finding out what his painting isn't, until he finally finds out what it is. And when you finally do find out what one corner of your vision is, you're off and running.

The earth is rocky and full of roots; it's clay, and it seems doomed and polluted, but you dig little holes for the ugly shriveled bulbs, throw in a handful of poppy seeds, and cover it all over, and you know you'll never see it again - it's death and clay and shrivel, and your hands are nicked from the rocks, your nails black with soil.

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.

Life does not seem to present itself to me for my convenience, to box itself up nicely so I can write about it with wisdom and a point to make before putting it on a shelf somewhere.

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.

The first holy truth in God 101 is that men and women of true faith have always had to accept the mystery of God's identity and love and ways. I hate that, but it's the truth.

I read the same amount of nonfiction and fiction.

The reason I never give up hope is because everything is so basically hopeless.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

I thought the secret of life was obvious: be here now, love as if your whole life depended on it, find your life's work, and try to get hold of a giant panda.

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.