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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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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We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be.
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I’m not going to change the way people think about me, but I can say you know what? I’m not going to carry that in my backpack.
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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.
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Never compare your insides to everyone else’s outsides.
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Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.
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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?
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Dogs are the closest we come to knowing the divine love of God on this side of eternity.
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The reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day.
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People help you or you help them and when we offer or receive help, we take in each other. And then we are saved.
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The miracle is that we are here, that no matter how undone we’ve been the night before, we wake up every morning and are still here. It is phenomenal just to be.
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I spent my whole life helping my mother carry around her psychic trunks like a bitter bellhop. So a great load was lifted when she died, and my life was much easier.
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I don’t remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don’t even know exist until you love a child.
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When faced with a crisis, do three things: breathe, pray and be kind.
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Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.
ANNE LAMOTT