“ Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft… Anne Lamott
“ What good people can do in the face of great sorrow. We help some time pass for those suffering. We sit with them in their hopeless pain and feel terrible with them, without trying to fix them with pl… Anne Lamott
“ One of the worst things about being a parent, for me, is the self-discovery, the being face to face with one's secret insanity and brokenness and rage. Anne Lamott
“ You begin to notice all the props surrounding these people, and you begin to understand how props define us and comfort us, and show us what we value and what we need, and who we think we are. Anne Lamott
“ Those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly and as privately as possible. But what I’ve discovered since is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a ba… Anne Lamott
“ Thinking about A. J. Muste, who during the Vietnam War stood in front of the White House night after night with a candle. One rainy night, a reporter asked him, Mr. Muste, do you really think you are… Anne Lamott
“ Perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force Anne Lamott
“ Only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it. Anne Lamott
“ It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. Anne Lamott
“ Do you still believe that I am the Resurrection and the Life? Even when you don’t get what you want? Even when nothing makes sense? Anne Lamott
“ A subterranean murmur. It may sound like one of the many separate voices that make up the sounds of a creek. Or it may come in code, oblique and sneaky, creeping in from around the corner. Anne Lamott
“ [Teaching] was hard. Some of the kids were needy and vulnerable and depressed, with faces of dubious, aged concern, rumpled foreheads, downcast or shuttered eyes. Some were wild. We did not exclude an… Anne Lamott
“ You've got to learn to let go and let your children fall, and fail. If you try to protect them from hurt, and always rush to their side with Band-Aids, they won't learn about life, and what is true, w… Anne Lamott
“ You stop pretending life is such fin or makes sense. It's often messy and cruel and dull, and we do the best we can. It's unfair, and jerks seem to win. But you fall in love with a few people. Anne Lamott
“ Yet union with a partner—someone with whom to wake, whom you love, and talk with on and off all day, and sit with at dinner, and watch TV and movies with, and read together in bed with, and do hard ta… Anne Lamott
“ Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while y… Anne Lamott
“ Writer’s block is going to happen to you. You will read what little you’ve written lately and see with absolute clarity that it is total dog shit. Anne Lamott
“ When you love something like reading - or drawing or music or nature - it surrounds you with a sense of connection to something great. If you are lucky enough to know this, then your search for meanin… Anne Lamott
“ When you are on the knife’s edge—when nobody knows exactly what is going to happen next, only that it will be worse—you take in today. Anne Lamott
“ When we try to see a damaged person as one of God's regular old customers, instead of a lost cause, it takes the pressure off everybody. We can then loosen our death grip on the person, which usually… Anne Lamott
