American author (1954- )
I am a terrible and lazy Christian. I do not believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. I just skip about a third of it. I love the parts I love so much, but I find a lot of it just appalling. When a right-wing person quotes a passage in order to attack and stigmatize another person--or group of people--I just roll my eyes.
ANNE LAMOTT
interview, Friends Journal, Jan. 30, 2013
I very rarely read the responses to my Salon pieces, because (as you may have noticed) the trolls can be SO evil. So violent in their hostility to me and my work. OK, wait, wait, wait. That's a lie. I do read the responses--and get mesmerized, like cobra hypnosis. But I laugh (mostly) at the trolls, and think about what tiny little weenies they must have. (They seem to be mostly men.) And then ALL these smart, funny people leap to my defense, which is medicine, and fills me with love and thankfulness.
ANNE LAMOTT
Salon, Nov. 3, 2014
Talking to the parents of older kids was helpful for me, since parents of kids the same age as yours won't admit how horrible their children are.
ANNE LAMOTT
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
I tell you, it's a brand-new world, it's as radical as having an infant. And I'm as clueless. And it turns out there are no operating instructions and no owner's manual that come with a teenager either.
ANNE LAMOTT
interview, beliefnet
We'll have the Jesusiest time ever!
ANNE LAMOTT
address at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College, 2000
The three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you.
ANNE LAMOTT
Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers
You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
If you have a problem you can solve by throwing money at it, you don't have a very interesting problem.
ANNE LAMOTT
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
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
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.
ANNE LAMOTT
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
When people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much.
ANNE LAMOTT
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Hope is not about proving anything. It's about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us.
ANNE LAMOTT
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable.
ANNE LAMOTT
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
I felt alternately rubbery and empty, like sometimes I was landing on the Swiss cheese, sometimes on the holes.
ANNE LAMOTT
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
I'd figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it's the gift of feeling floppier.
ANNE LAMOTT
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
Slowly, after dozens of rejection slips and failures and false starts and postponed dreams--what Langston Hughes called dreams deferred--I stepped onto the hallowed ground of being a published novelist, and then, fifteen years later, I started to make real money.
ANNE LAMOTT
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
In biblical times, they used to stone a few thirteen-year-olds with some regularity, which helped keep the others quiet and at home. The mothers were usually in the first row of stone-throwers, and had to be restrained.
ANNE LAMOTT
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
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
Bird by Bird