Anne Lamott Inspirational Quotations

There is ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness.

Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

Hope begins in the dark.

Your unconscious can't work when you are breathing down its neck.

A big heart is both a clunky and a delicate thing; it doesn't protect itself and it doesn't hide. It stands out, like a baby's fontanel, where you can see the soul pulse through.

We're out there somewhere between the known and the unknown, trying to reel in both for a closer look.

You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. ... Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.

If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've already been in.

Joy is the best makeup.

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.

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.

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

It helps to resign as the controller of your fate. All that energy we expend to keep things running right is not what's keeping things running right. We're bugs struggling in the river, brightly visible to the trout below. With that fact in mind, people like me make up all these rules to give us the illusion that we are in charge. I need to say to myself, they're not needed, hon. Just take in the buggy pleasures. Be kind to the others, grab the fleck of riverweed, notice how beautifully your bug legs scull.

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.