Why couldn't Jesus command us to obsess over everything, to try to control and manipulate people, to try not to breathe at all, or to pay attention, stomp away to brood when people annoy us, and then eat a big bag of Hershey's Kisses in bed? Anne Lamott More Quotes by Anne Lamott More Quotes From Anne Lamott I do believe that God is with us even when we're at our craziest and that this goodness guides, provides, and protects. Anne Lamott guides goodness believe It's funny where we look for salvation, and where we actually find it. Anne Lamott salvation looks I feel incredibly successful. I make a living as a writer and am able to help support a big family, my church, my bleeding-heart causes. Anne Lamott support successful heart Creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty. Anne Lamott creativity writing mean What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here. Anne Lamott order children people I like the desert for short periods of time, from inside a car, with the windows rolled up, and the doors locked. I prefer beach resorts with room service. Anne Lamott car doors beach 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. Anne Lamott rocks roots hands I don't have very sophisticated taste in music. I listen to a lot of folk music. I like reggae. Anne Lamott reggae taste-in-music sophisticated Everything takes me forever. It's all lurch, flail. I hope that is good news to you writers. Anne Lamott take-me news forever 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. Anne Lamott smell mother giving What if you wake up some day, and you're 65... and you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life? Anne Lamott what-if creative people We're like Magic 8-Balls. After you ask your question and shake the 8-Ball, you read the answer in the little window. If you ever broke open a Magic 8-Ball with a hammer, you discovered that it contained a many-sided plastic object, with an answer on every facet, floating in a cylinder of murky blue fluid. The many-sided core held the answer to your question. My theory is that, as with our children, as with every surface of that geodesic dome inside the 8-Ball, every age we've ever been is who we are. Anne Lamott magic blue children I'd wanted to be a writer my whole life. But when I finally made it, I felt like a greyhound catching the mechanical rabbit she'd been chasing for so long--discovering it was merely metal, wrapped in cloth. It wasn't alive; it had no spirit. It was fake. Anne Lamott fake rabbits long I used to love to untangle chains when I was a child. I had thin, busy fingers, and I never gave up. Perhaps there was a psychiatric component to my concentration but like much of my psychic damage, this worked to everyone's advantage. Anne Lamott damage psychics children You know, we're often ashamed of asking for so much help because it seems selfish or petty or narcissistic, but I think, if there's a God -- and I believe there is -- that God is there to help. That's what God's job is. Anne Lamott selfish jobs believe I try to write the books I would love to come upon that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness - and that can make me laugh. Anne Lamott real spiritual book I have a very dark sense of humor. I swear. I have a very playful relationship with Jesus. Anne Lamott sense-of-humor dark jesus I quit my last real job, as a writer at a magazine, when I was twenty-one. That was the moment when I lost my place of prestige on the fast track, and slowly, millimeter by millimeter, I started to get found, to discover who I had been born to be, instead of the impossibly small package, all tied up tightly in myself, that I had agreed to be. Anne Lamott track real jobs Just don't pretend you know more about your characters than they do, because you don't. Stay open to them. It's teatime and all the dolls are at the table. Listen. It's that simple. Anne Lamott simple writing character But you don't always get what you want;,you get what you get Anne Lamott what-you-want want
