Anne Lamott Prayer Quotations

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.

Prayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. (In fact, these are probably the best possible conditions under which to pray.) Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.

'Help' is a prayer that is always answered.

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.

Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, 'Well, isn't that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I'll figure out what we're going to do about your stuff.

Quiet, deep breath after any prayer is another form of Amen.

Anything you say from your heart to God is a prayer.

The reason 'help' is such a great prayer is that God is the gift of desperation. When you're in despair, you're teachable.

Anything you say from your heart to God is a prayer. But "why" is rarely a useful question. When Job keeps asking God why he has had such loss and suffering, God says, "You wouldn't understand." I always want to know why, and I almost never have a good answer.

I've seen prayers answered. But often, in my experiences, if you get what you pray for, you've really shortchanged yourself.

The difference between you and God is that God doesn't think He's you.

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.

Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe over the last twenty-five years, that there's something to be said about keeping prayer simple. Help, Thanks, Wow.

Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors.

A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I'm not going to take anything away from you, you have to give it to Me.

It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said 'do the best you can with these, they will have to do'. And mostly, against all odds, they do.

Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.