MIA: Return with a Collection of My Fav Anne Lamott Quotes

Life has had a way of reminding me of alot of things lately. Nothing is certain. Faith is hard. I control about 1/100th of the things that I sometimes think I do. This big crazy world is spinning around. So I did what I always do when every thing seems more than I can bare and I feel so ill equiped to even attempt to handle things...I whisper, Anne's little prayer. "Help." Then as some time passes and a little grace creeps in, I return to the living and look for my copy of Traveling Mercies or Grace Eventually or just my collection of her quotes. Anne makes me smile and not feel so broken and I get back to work. Thought I would post my favorites here but I couldn't find one of my favorites...about the wailing wall...

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." — Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

"I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us." — Anne Lamott

"You can either practice being right or practice being kind." — Anne Lamott

"I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish." — Anne Lamott

"And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore." — Anne Lamott (Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year)


"Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past." — Anne Lamott

"I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me--that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns." — Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith)

"It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said 'do the best you can with these, they will have to do'. And mostly, against all odds, they do. " — Anne Lamott (Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith)

"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." — Anne Lamott

"You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp." — Anne Lamott

"Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining." — Anne Lamott

"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it." — Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

""I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kind of things. Also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in the silence, in the dark."" — Anne Lamott (Grace [Eventually]: Thoughts on Faith)

"Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are. From her graduation commencement address to Berkeley." — Anne Lamott

"Not forgiving is like drinking cat poison and then waiting for the rat to die." — Anne Lamott

"Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there." — Anne Lamott

"Sometimes grace works like water wings when you feel you are sinking." — Anne Lamott (Grace [Eventually]: Thoughts on Faith)

"'I liked those ladies! They were helpers, and they danced.' These are the words I want on my gravestone: that I was a helper, and that I danced." — Anne Lamott (Grace [Eventually]: Thoughts on Faith)

"Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. If you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare..." — Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith)