Denise > Denise's Quotes

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.”
― Jim Henson

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”
― Anne Lamott

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”
― Stephen King

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You

“That's about as effective as a windshield wiper on a goat's ass.”
― Denise Tompkins

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain

“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
― Anne Lamott

“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.”
― Anne Lamott

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“You can either practice being right or practice being kind.”
― Anne Lamott

“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

“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
― Anne Lamott

“You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.”
― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

“A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal.”
― Anne Lamott, Joe Jones

“I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer. Hope 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.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town”
― Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): 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

“If you have a body, you are entitled to the full range of feelings. It comes with the package.”
― Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

“Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived...Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation... Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend. 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

“Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it...I would discover that it hadn't washed me away.”
― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

“I worry that Jesus drinks himself to sleep when he hears me talk like this.”
― Anne Lamott

“But you can’t get to any of these truths by sitting in a field smiling beatifically, avoiding your anger and damage and grief. Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don’t have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not go in to. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in – then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.”
― Anne Lamott

“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust
Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust”
― John Webster

“A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover