Ann Lamott > Quotes

“This is what i told the women in the tent...stories of mess and redemption because stories can be our most reliable medicine.”
― Ann Lamott

“Maturity is retaining a modicum of grace when you do not get your own way. Also, maturity is hope...”
― Ann Lamott

“The hardest work we do is self-love and forgiveness.”
― Ann Lamott

“that a good marriage is one in which each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our bosom friendships. You could almost flush with appreciation. What a great scam, to have gotten people of such extreme quality and loyalty to think you are stuck with them. Oh my God. Thank you.”
― Ann Lamott

“Most good, honest prayers remind me that I am not in charge, that I cannot fix anything, and that I open myself to being helped by something, some force, some friends, some something. These prayers say, "Dear Some Something, I don't know what I am doing. I can't see where I am going. I am getting more lost, more afraid, more clenched. Help.”
― Ann Lamott

“Never give up on intimate friendships or science or nature. They have always saved us and they will again.”
― Ann Lamott

“You may be saying: “It’s so awful right now, and I am so pissed off and sad and mental, that against all odds I’m giving up. I’ll accept whatever happens.”

Maybe after you put a note in the God box, you’ll go a little limp, and in that divine limpness you’ll be able to breathe again. Then you’re halfway home. In many cases, breath is all you need. Breath is holy spirit. Breath is Life. It’s oxygen. Breath might get you a little rest. You must be so exhausted. With a God box, you’re finally announcing to the universe that you can’t do it, that you have ruined things enough for the time being. Imagine the burlesque look of surprise on the universe’s face! The great cosmic double-take; then a fist pump. This is what gets everyone off the hook, the hook being the single worst place to be.

My priest friend Bill Rankin said that through prayer, we take ourselves off the hook and put God on the hook, where God belongs.”
― Ann Lamott

“I know the secret of life: if you want to have loving feelings, do loving things...”
― Ann Lamott

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”
― Ann Lamott

“He's your friend that you get to sleep with and wake up with. That's what married life is at it's most basic; a friend, your teammate, a person you trust and look forward to talking to about anything. Someone who seems to really really like you, who you like, too.”
― Ann Lamott

“The first and truest thing is that all truth is a paradox. Life is both a precious, unfathomably beautiful gift, and it's impossible here, on the incarnational side of things. It's been a very bad match for those of us who were born extremely sensitive. It's so hard and weird that we sometimes wonder if we're being punked. It's filled simultaneously with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, desperate poverty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together”
― Ann Lamott

“Is it [marriage] supposed to be this ordinary? Where you're still mostly madly in love and you've never met someone so brilliant who is also kind 95% of the time but who is as set in his annoying ways as you are in your's...”
― Ann Lamott