Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don’t make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.
ANNE LAMOTTHope 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.
More Anne Lamott Quotes
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Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.
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Pay attention to the beauty surrounding you.
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This is one thing they forget to mention in most child-rearing books, that at times you will just lose your mind. Period.
ANNE LAMOTT -
We are not here to see through one another, but to see one another through.
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Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we’re invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence.
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You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.
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If we stay where we are, where we’re stuck, where we’re comfortable and safe, we die there… When nothing new can get in, that’s death.
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To love yourself as you are is a miracle, and to seek yourself is to have found yourself for now. And now is all we have, and love is who we are.
ANNE LAMOTT -
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.
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Radical self-care is quantum, and radiates out into the atmosphere, like a little fresh air. It is a huge gift to the world. When people respond by saying, “Well, isn’t she full of herself,” smile obliquely, like Mona Lisa, and make both of you a nice cup of tea.
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The world is always going to be dangerous, and people get badly banged up, but how can there be more meaning than helping one another stand up in a wind and stay warm?
ANNE LAMOTT -
You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don’t think your way into becoming yourself.
ANNE LAMOTT -
I was reminded of the Four Immutable Laws of the Spirit: Whoever is present are the right people. Whenever it begins is the right time. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened. And when it’s over, it’s over.
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Your inside person doesn’t age. Your inside person is soul, is heart, in the eternal now, the ageless, the old, the young, all the ages you’ve ever been.
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Laughter is carbonated holiness.
ANNE LAMOTT