Quotes from Anne Lamott

And did you get what you wanted from this life even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can't—and, in fact, you're not supposed to—know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing.

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. … When you are aware of all that has been given you, in your lifetime and in the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back.

Life is not a submarine. There are no plans.

Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world's worst roommate, like having Janis Joplin with a bad hangover and PMS come to stay with you.

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.

Above me, wind does it's best to blow leaves off the aspen tree a month too soon. No use wind. All you succeed in doing is making music; the noise of failure growing beautiful.

Mercy is radical kindness. Mercy means offering or being offered aid in desperate straits. Mercy is not deserved. It involves absolving the unabsolvable, forgiving the unforgivable. Mercy brings us to the miracle of apology, given and accepted, to unashamed humility when we have erred or forgotten. Charge it to our heads and not our hearts, as the elders in black churches have long said.

It stops and gasps at beauty and is bathed in it. And sometimes it begins to weep.

You reap exactly what you sow; that is, you cannot grow tulips from zucchini seeds.

There is the absolute hopelessness we face that everyone we love will die, even our newborn granddaughter, even as we trust and know that love will give rise to growth, miracles, and resurrection.

We religious types, even those who detest organized religion, pray for deeper faith and a greater sense of oneness with God.