Quotes from Anne Lamott

If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there. We become like mushrooms, living in the dark, with poop up to our chins. If you want to know only what you already know, you're dying. You're saying: Leave me alone; I don't mind this little rathole. It's warm and dry. Really, it's fine.

Writing involves seeing people suffer and, as Robert Stone once put it, finding some meaning therein.

It was about tragedy transformed over the years into joy. It was about the beauty of sheer effort. I

Look around and see whom you can serve.

Remember that you own what happened to you.

If we can believe in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, old Uncle Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth can destroy you.

My true religion is kindness. That is a great moral position - practicing kindness, keeping one's heart open in the presence of suffering.

I hoped her life would turn topsy-turvy enough to get her attention. Topsy-turvy is often a symptom for the presence of God—the last become first, the hungry are fed, the obnoxious are welcomed.

I'm not sure I even recognize the ever-presence of mercy anymore, the divine and the human; the messy, crippled, transforming, heartbreaking, lovely, devastating presence of mercy. But I have come to believe that I am starving to death for it, and my world is, too.

So try to calm down, get quiet, breathe, and listen.

Sigh: who was it who said that to get into heaven, you needed a letter of recommendation from the poor?

Will call him a she when the pee-pee is gone. Says Brave is to endure stares, jeers, prejudice. He won't.