Anne Lamott: There is nothing more touching to me then a family pictur...

Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

Anne Lamott

feet inspiring looks

Love is so much bigger than our ignorance.

Anne Lamott

bigger ignorance love-is

Let’s think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world…Try walking around with a child who’s going, ‘Wow, wow! Look at that dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that red sky!’ And the child points, and you look, and you see, and you start going, ‘Wow! Look at that huge crazy hedge! Look at that teeny little baby! Look at the scary dark cloud!’ I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world – present and in awe.

Anne Lamott

dog baby children

And yet, I do believe there is ultimately meaning in the chaos, and also in the doldrums. What I resist is not the truth but when people put a pretty bow on scary things instead of saying, 'This is a nightmare. I hate everything. I’m going to go hide in the garage.'

Anne Lamott

hate believe people

Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world's worst roommate, like having Janis Joplin with a bad hangover and PMS come to stay with you.

Anne Lamott

pms hangover baby

... one of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people. [p. 65]

Anne Lamott

being-human law people

I guess he'll have to figure out someday that he is supposed to have this dark side, that it is part of what it means to be human, to have the darkness just as much as the light- that in fact the dark parts make the light visible; without them, the light would disappear. But I guess he has to figure other stuff out first, like how to keep his neck from flopping all over the place and how to sit up.

Anne Lamott

light dark mean

If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.

Anne Lamott

emotional real writing

This is who I want to be in the world. This is who I think we are supposed to be, people who help call forth human beings from deep inside hopelessness.

Anne Lamott

people world thinking

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

gravestone helpers want

And she is going to dance, dance hungry, dance full, dance each cold astonishing moment, now when she is young and again when she is old.

Anne Lamott

cold dance moments

Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.

Anne Lamott

hate real prayer

I had NO interest in being a theologian, especially not a Christian, as I had been raised by progressive atheists. We bowed down every morning to the golden calf of the New York Times, Noam Chomsky, Hannah Arendt. I tried to get my parents to respect and nourish me, let alone delight in me, so even though I secretly loved and believed in the Divine Something - Goodness, Good Orderly Direction, Gift of Desperation, the Cosmic Muffin - I wasn't ready yet to commit myself to the study of a higher power.

Anne Lamott

atheist christian morning

No" is a complete sentence.

Anne Lamott

sentences health inspire

Every time I see the bumper sticker that says “We think we’re humans having spiritual experiences, but we’re really spirits having human experiences,” I (a) think it’s true and (b) want to ram the car.

Anne Lamott

car spiritual thinking

You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up when you're holding your breath. And writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like water - just as writing is also about dealing with the emptiness.

Anne Lamott

filling-up writing running

Do you mind even a little that you are still addicted to people-pleasing, and are still putting everyone else’s needs and laundry and career ahead of your creative, spiritual life? Giving all your life force away, to “help” and impress. Well, your help is not helpful, and falls short.

Anne Lamott

careers spiritual fall

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.

Anne Lamott

effort voice writing

Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of humor or insider pathos or meaning. All of us can sing the same song, and there will still be four billion different renditions.

Anne Lamott

life-is-like song drama

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

Anne Lamott

brother father book

There is nothing more touching to me then a family picture where everyone is trying to look his or her best, but you can see what a mess they all really are.