Quotes from Anne Lamott

Publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

She uses a formula when writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending.

Writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like water - just as writing is also about dealing with the emptiness.

Time is so full for people who are dying in a conscious way, full in the way that life is for children. They spend big round hours.

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.

These days are among the hardest we will ever live through. The wind is blowing, but because we are together in this, we have hope. Most days. Maybe more than ever before in my lifetime, my friends and I are aware of our brokenness and the deep crazy, the desperation for light, hope, food, and medicine for poor. What helps is that we are not all crazy and hopeless on the same day. one of us remembers and reminds the rest of us that when it is really dark you can see the stars.

All it takes is one safe person to listen, to hear, to noodge us to start over and not give up.

As is' is the portal to creation, to new life.

Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means you are willing to stop being such a jerk. When you are aware of all that has been given to you, in your lifetime and in the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back.

Hello, Dearest. I'm so glad it's you!" I've come to believe that this is how God feels when I pray, even at my least attractive.

Periods in the wilderness or desert were not lost time. You might find life, wildflowers, fossils, sources of water.

You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up when you're holding your breath.