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I Guess He'll Have To Figure Out Someday That He Is Supposed To Have This Dark Side, That It Is Part Of What It Means To Be Human, To Have The Darkness Just As Much As The Light- That In Fact The Dark Parts Make The Light Visible; Without Them, The Light Would Disappear. But I Guess He Has To Figure Other Stuff Out First, Like How To Keep His Neck From Flopping All Over The Place And How To Sit Up.

-Anne Lamott

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I Guess He'll Have

Anne Lamott

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I Guess He'll Have To Figure Out Someday That He Is Supposed To Have This Dark Side, That It Is Part Of What It Means To Be Human, To Have The Darkness Just As Much As The Light- That In Fact The Dark Parts Make The Light Visible; Without Them, The Light Would Disappear. But I Guess He Has To Figure Other Stuff Out First, Like How To Keep His Neck From Flopping All Over The Place And How To Sit Up.

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I've Heard People Say That God Is The Gift Of Desperation, And There's A Lot To Be Said For Having Really Reached A Bottom Where You've Run Out Of Any More Good Ideas Or Plans For Everybody Else's Behavior; Or How To Save And Fix And Rescue; Or Just Get Out Of A Huge Mess, Possibly Of Your Own Creation.

Your Inside Person Doesn’t Age. Your Inside Person Is Soul, Is Heart, In The Eternal Now, The Ageless, The Old, The Young, All The Ages You’ve Ever Been.

On The Spiritual Path, All The Dreck And Misery Is Transformed, Maybe Not That Same Day, But Still Transformed Into Spiritual Fuel Or Insight.

You Keep Working On Your Piece Over And Over, Trying To Get The Sections And Paragraphs And Sentences And The Whole Just Right, But There's A Point At Which You Can Tell You've Begun Hurting The Work With Your Perfectionism. Then You Have To Release The Work To New Eyes.

I Get Thirsty People Glasses Of Water, Even If That Thirsty Person Is Just Me.

Toddlers Can Make You Feel As If You Have Violated Some Archaic Law In Their Personal Koran And You Should Die, Infidel.

You Are Desperate To Communicate, To Edify Or Entertain, To Preserve Moments Of Grace Or Joy Or Transcendence, To Make Real Or Imagined Events Come Alive. But You Cannot Will This To Happen. It Is A Matter Of Persistence And Faith And Hard Work. So You Might As Well Just Go Ahead And Get Started.

And As It Turns Out, If One Person Is Praying For You, Buckle Up. Things Can Happen.

Everyone Is Flailing Through This Life Without An Owner's Manual, With Whatever Modicum Of Grace And Good Humor We Can Manage.

This Is The Easter Message, That Awakening Is Possible, To The Goodness Of God, The Sacredness Of Human Life, The Sisterhood And Brotherhood Of All.

God Sent Jesus To Join The Human Experience, Which Means To Make A Lot Of Mistakes. Jesus Didn't Arrive Here Knowing How To Walk. He Had Fingers And Toes, Confusion, Sexual Feelings, Crazy Human Internal Processes. He Had The Same Prejudices As The Rest Of His Tribe: He Had To Learn That The Canaanite Woman Was A Person. He Had To Suffer The Hardships And Tedium And Setbacks Of Being A Regular Person. If He Hadn't The Incarnation Would Mean Nothing.

Radical Self-care Is What We've Been Longing For, Desperate For, Our Entire Lives-friendship With Our Own Hearts.

Trying To Reason With An Addict Was Like Trying To Blow Out A Lightbulb.

It Feels Like I'm Babysitting In The Twilight Zone. I Keep Waiting For The Parents To Show Up Because We Are Out Of Chips And Diet Cokes.

When Hope Is Not Pinned Wriggling Onto A Shiny Image Or Expectation, It Sometimes Floats Forth And Opens.

You Are Going To Have To Give And Give And Give, Or There's No Reason For You To Be Writing. You Have To Give From The Deepest Part Of Yourself, And You Are Going To Have To Go On Giving, And The Giving Is Going To Have To Be Its Own Reward. There Is No Cosmic Importance To Your Getting Something Published, But There Is In Learning To Be A Giver.

I Was Raised By My Parents To Believe That You Had A Moral Obligation To Try And Save The World. You Sent Money To The Red Cross, You Registered People To Vote, You Marched In Rallies, Stood In Vigils, Picked Up Litter.

Because This Business Of Becoming Conscious, Of Being A Writer, Is Ultimately About Asking Yourself, How Alive Am I Willing To Be?

I'm Very Sad About Mitch Mcconnell Probably Getting To Be Senate Majority Leader, If Only For Two Years. To Me, He Is Just Everything That Is Wrong With The World, A Bullying Obstructionist Blowhard Liar (not To Put Too Fine A Point On It).

Majority Leader

I Still Encourage Anyone Who Feels At All Compelled To Write To Do So. I Just Try To Warn People Who Hope To Get Published That Publication Is Not All 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.

We Write To Expose The Unexposed. If There Is One Door In The Castle You Have Been Told Not To Go Through, You Must. The Writer's Job Is To Turn The Unspeakable Into Words - Not Just Into Any Words, But If We Can, Into Rhythm And Blues.

I Am Learning Slowly To Bring My Crazy Pinball-machine Mind Back To This Place.

You Get Your Intuition Back When You Make Space For It, When You Stop The Chattering Of The Rational Mind. The Rational Mind Doesn't Nourish You. You Assume That It Gives You The Truth, Because The Rational Mind Is The Golden Calf That This Culture Worships, But This Is Not True. Rationality Squeezes Out Much That Is Rich And Juicy And Fascinating.

Perfectionism Is A Mean, Frozen Form Of Idealism, While Messes Are The Artist's True Friend.

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 That 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 The Past Few Days, It Is Hard Not To Be Humbled, And Pleased To Give Back.

If You Have A Problem You Can Solve By Throwing Money At It, You Don't Have A Very Interesting Problem.

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 Think Joy And Sweetness And Affection Are A Spiritual Path. We're Here To Know God, To Love And Serve God, And To Be Blown Away By The Beauty And Miracle Of Nature. You Just Have To Get Rid Of So Much Baggage To Be Light Enough To Dance, To Sing, To Play. You Don't Have Time To Carry Grudges; You Don't Have Time To Cling To The Need To Be Right.

A Good Marriage Is Where Both People Feel Like They're Getting The Better End Of The Deal.

My Father Really Taught Me That You Really Develop The Habit Of Writing And You Sit Down At The Same Time Every Day, You Don't Wait For Inspiration.

I Spent My Whole Life Helping My Mother Carry Around Her Psychic Trunks Like A Bitter Bellhop. So A Great Load Was Lifted When She Died, And My Life Was Much Easier.

Frequently, As So Many Poets And Psalmists And Songwriters Have Said, The Invisible Shift Happens Through The Broken Places.

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.

My Natural Tendency Is To Complicate Everything--and Then To Spray Words And Ideas Onto Everything Afterwards. I've Had To Develop The Habit Of Keeping Things Simple.

The Reason 'help' Is Such A Great Prayer Is That God Is The Gift Of Desperation. When You're In Despair, You're Teachable.

Rule 1: When All Else Fails, Follow Instructions. And Rule 2: Don't Be An Asshole.

When All Else Fails

I Am Drawn To People That Are Not Going To Shy Away From The Very Dark, Scary Stuff Of The Human Condition And In A Lot Of Cases People Need Alcohol Or Drugs To Create Poetry And Poetic Pose That Can Take You So Far Out There Where You Are Still Able To Recognize Yourself And Then To Bring You Back Home Where You're Not The Same Person You Were When You Left.

What If We Never 'get Over' Certain Deaths, Or Our Childhoods? What If The Idea That We Should Have By Now, Or Will, Is A Great Palace Lie? What If We're Not Supposed To? What If It Takes A Life Time...?

I Love Silence. I Seek And Create It At Every Opportunity. I Need It To Work.

If You Always Dreamed Of Writing A Novel Or A Memoir, And You Used To Love To Write, And Were Pretty Good At It, Will It Break Your Heart If It Turns Out You Never Got Around To It? If You Wake Up One Day At Eighty, Will You Feel Nonchalant That Something Always Took Precedence Over A Daily Commitment To Discovering Your Creative Spirit? If Not--if This Very Thought Fills You With Regret--then What Are You Waiting For?

I Was Raised In A Family Where None Of Us Ever Raised A Voice, So There Was No Room To Express Feelings Of Rage Or Even Unabashed Joy - A Little Bashed Joy, Here Or There, Or Being Mildly Disgruntled.

And I Felt Like My Heart Had Been So Thoroughly And Irreparably Broken That There Could Be No Real Joy Again, That At Best There Might Eventually Be A Little Contentment. Everyone Wanted Me To Get Help And Rejoin Life, Pick Up The Pieces And Move On, And I Tried To, I Wanted To, But I Just Had To Lie In The Mud With My Arms Wrapped Around Myself, Eyes Closed, Grieving, Until I Didn’t Have To Anymore.

I Thought Such Awful Thoughts That I Cannot Even Say Them Out Loud Because They Would Make Jesus Want To Drink Gin Straight Out Of The Cat Dish.

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.

Her Purse Was A Weight, Ballast; It Tethered Her To The Earth As Her Mind Floated Away.

You Can Either Set Brick As A Laborer Or As An Artist. You Can Make The Work A Chore, Or You Can Have A Good Time. You Can Do It The Way You Used To Clear The Dinner Dishes When You Were Thirteen, Or You Can Do It As A Japanese Person Would Perform A Tea Ceremony, With A Level Of Concentration And Care In Which You Can Lose Yourself, And So In Which You Can Find Yourself.

Finding Yourself

My Main Problem Is That Over And Over Again, I Try To Get All My Characters To Say Stuff That I Think Is So Witty Or Erudite You Know, So That Everybody Will Go.

Expectations Are Resentment Waiting To Happen.

There's A Lovely Hasidic Story Of A Rabbi Who Always Told His People That If They Studied The Torah, It Would Put Scripture On Their Hearts. One Of Them Asked, "why On Our Hearts, And Not In Them?" The Rabbi Answered, "only God Can Put Scripture Inside. But Reading Sacred Text Can Put It On Your Heart, And Then When Your Hearts Break, The Holy Words Will Fall Inside.

Write Straight Into The Emotional Center Of Things. Write Toward Vulnerability. Don't Worry About Appearing Sentimental. Worry About Being Unavailable; Worry About Being Absent Or Fraudulent.

We Cheated, You And Me, And Someone Noticed. I Noticed You; Someone Else Noticed Me. It Hurts Us. That's Not So Bad. So Many People Cheat. Everywhere On Every Level. Everyone's Cheated. I'm Just Saying That You Don't Need To See Yourself As A Cheater. Because That's Not Who You Are. You're Someone Who Cheated. There's A Difference, And You Should Try To Get That Difference, Or That's Who You'll Grow Up To Be.

I Remember Staring At My Son Endlessly When He Was An Infant, Stunned By His Very Existence, Wondering Where On Earth He Had Come From.

There Is Ecstasy In Paying Attention.

Sometimes It Feels Like God Has Reached Down And Touched Me, Blessed Me A Thousand Times Over, And Sometimes It All Feels Like A Mean Joke, Like God's Advisers Are Muammar Qaddafi And Phyllis Schlafly.

Human Lives Are Hard, Even Those Of Health And Privilege, And Don't Make Much Sense. This Is The Message Of The Book Of Job: Any Snappy Explanation Of Suffering You Come Up With Will Be Horseshit.

Once An Old Woman At My Church Said The Secret Is That God Loves Us Exactly The Way We Are And That He Loves Us Too Much To Let Us Stay Like This, And I'm Just Trying To Trust That.

Over And Over I Feel As If My Characters Know Who They Are, And What Happens To Them, And Where They Have Been And Where They Will Go, And What They Are Capable Of Doing, But They Need Me To Write It Down For Them Because Their Handwriting Is So Bad.

I’m Probably Just As Good A Mother As The Next Repressed, Obsessive-compulsive Paranoiac.

Obsessive Compulsive

I Think We're All Pretty Crazy On This Bus. I'm Not Sure I Know Anyone Who's Got All The Dots On His Or Her Dice.

I Became A Christian Before I Got Sober. So I Was A Drunk, Bulimic Christian.

The Opposite Of Faith Is Not Doubt, It’s Certainty.

Doubt And Certainty

Jealousy Has Always Been My Cross, The Weakness And Woundedness In Me That Has Most Often Caused Me To Feel Ugly And Unlovable, Like The Bad Seed.

I Went To Goucher College In Maryland For The Best Possible Reasons - To Learn - But Then I Dropped Out At 19 For The Best Possible Reasons - To Become A Writer.

We're Like Magic 8-balls. After You Ask Your Question And Shake The 8-ball, You Read The Answer In The Little Window. If You Ever Broke Open A Magic 8-ball With A Hammer, You Discovered That It Contained A Many-sided Plastic Object, With An Answer On Every Facet, Floating In A Cylinder Of Murky Blue Fluid. The Many-sided Core Held The Answer To Your Question. My Theory Is That, As With Our Children, As With Every Surface Of That Geodesic Dome Inside The 8-ball, Every Age We've Ever Been Is Who We Are.

Perfectionism Means That You Try Not To Leave So Much Mess To Clean Up. But Clutter And Mess Show Us That Life Is Being Lived.

Good Therapy Helps. Good Friends Help. Pretending That We Are Doing Better Than We Are Doesn't. Shame Doesn't. Being Heard Does.

I'm One Of Those Religious People Who Are Afraid Of Everything. I'm Instantly Worried About Everything That Could Go Wrong.

I Didn't Need To Understand The Hypostatic Unity Of The Trinity; I Just Needed To Turn My Life Over To Whoever Came Up With Redwood Trees.

This Is A Very Violent Place To Live, The Earth, And We're A Very Violent Species. Cain Is Still Killing Abel. We See That Every Day.

We Can't Understand When We're Pregnant, Or When Our Siblings Are Expecting, How Profound It Is To Have A Shared History With A Younger Generation: Blood, Genes, Humor. It Means We Were Actually Here, On Earth, For A Time - Like The Egyptians With Their Pyramids, Only With Children.

Every Time I See The Bumper Sticker That Says “we Think We’re Humans Having Spiritual Experiences, But We’re Really Spirits Having Human Experiences,” I (a) Think It’s True And (b) Want To Ram The Car.

I Just Try To Love And Serve Everyone, And Bring Everyone Water, And Lend An Ear; That's What Jesus Said To Do.

What An Incredible Drug Fear Is.

I Went To Church With My Grandparents Sometimes And I Loved It.

Just Don't Pretend You Know More About Your Characters Than They Do, Because You Don't. Stay Open To Them. It's Teatime And All The Dolls Are At The Table. Listen. It's That Simple.

Living On Earth Has Always Been A Dangerous Way To Spend Your Time.

Left To My Own Devices, My First Inclination Is To Mess In Other People's Lives. I Secretly Believe My Whole Family, And Really The Whole World, Is My Responsibility.

All I Ever Wanted Since I Arrived Here On Earth Were The Things That Turned Out To Be Within Reach. The Same Things I Needed As A Baby - To Go From Cold To Warm, Lonely To Held, The Vessel To The Giver, Empty To Full. You Can Change The World With A Hot Bath, If You Sink Into It From A Place Of Knowing That You Are Worth Profound Care, Even When You're Dirty And Rattled. Who Knew?

It Was Not Facing What Life Dealt That Made You Crazy, But Rather Trying To Set Life Straight Where It Was Unstraightenable.

Novels Ought To Have Hope; At Least, American Novels Ought To Have Hope. French Novels Don't Need To. We Mostly Win Wars, They Lose Them. Of Course, They Did Hide More Jews Than Many Other Countries, And This Is A Form Of Winning.

There Are A Lot Of Us, Some Published, Some Not, Who Think The Literary Life Is The Loveliest One Possible, This Life Of Reading And Writing And Corresponding. We Think This Life Is Nearly Ideal.

He Got Me A Cup Of Tea With Honey, Toast With Honey, Yogurt With Honey, Like I Was John The Baptist With The Flu.

It Was Simple Reality - Most Competitive Tennis Players In My Day Were Privileged, Spoiled, Entitled And White. Also, Many Of Them Were Beautiful, Fit, Tan And Of Good Stock - Great Big Hair And White Teeth And Long Legs. Then There Were The Rest Of Us.

I Never Had A Particularly Strong Craving To Procreate, Except For Earlier Fantasies Of Wanting To Be Marmee In Little Women.

I Don't Have Very Sophisticated Taste In Music. I Listen To A Lot Of Folk Music. I Like Reggae.

When You Make Friends With Fear, It Can’t Rule You.

Don't Look At Your Feet To See If You Are Doing It Right. Just Dance.

We Want A Sense That An Important Character, Like A Narrator, Is Reliable. We Want To Believe That A Character Is Not Playing Ages Or Being Coy Or Being Manipulative, But Is Telling The Truth To The Best Of His Or Her Ability...we Do Not Wish To Be Crudely Manipulated...we Want To Be Massaged By A Masseur, Not Whapped By A Carpet Beater.

I Sat Down In The Sand, Breathless With Shame And Failure. God, I Thought, Some Defender Of The Weak. Some Freedom Fighter: Joan Of Arc In Sunscreen.

I Used To Think That Paired Opposites Were A Given, That Love Was The Opposite Of Hate, Right The Opposite Of Wrong. But Now I Think We Sometimes Buy Into These Concepts Because It Is So Much Easier To Embrace Absolutes Than To Suffer Reality. I Don't Think Anything Is The Opposite Of Love. Reality Is Unforgivingly Complex.

Life Is Really Pretty Tricky, And There's A Lot Of Loss, And The Longer You Stay Alive, The More People You Lose Whom You Actually Couldn't Live Without.

You Can Change The World With A Hot Bath, If You Sink Into It From A Place Of Knowing That You Are Worth Profound Care, Even When You're Dirty And Rattled.

Publication Is Not All That It Is Cracked Up To Be. But Writing Is.

We Are A Species That Needs And Wants To Understand Who We Are. Sheep Lice Do Not Seem To Share This Longing, Which Is One Reason Why They Write So Little.

Some People Have A Thick Skin And You Don’t. Your Heart Is Really Open And That Is Going To Cause Pain, But That Is An Appropriate Response To This World. The Cost Is High, But The Blessing Of Being Compassionate Is Beyond Your Wildest Dreams.

Feeding A Baby Is Like Filling A Hole With Putty - You Get It In And Then You Sort Of Shave Off All The Excess Around The Hole And Get It Back In, Like You're Spackling.

You Are Going To Love Some Of Your Characters Because They Are You Or Some Facet Of You, And You Are Going To Hate Some Of Your Characters For The Same Reason.

The Reason I Never Give Up Hope Is Because Everything Is So Basically Hopeless.

Expectations Are Resentments Under Construction.

Presents Can Make Up For Some Of The Disappointments That Life Doles Out, Such As It Makes Almost No Sense And Is Coming To An End More Quickly Than Ever.

Coming To An End

Being On A Book Tour Is Like Being On The Seesaw When You're A Little Kid. The Excitement Is In Having Someone To Play With, And In Rising Up In The Air, But Then You're At The Mercy Of Those Holding You Down, And If It's Your Older Brother, Or Paul Wolfowitz, They Leap Up, So That You Crash Down And Get Hurt.

The Worst Part About Celebrating Another Birthday Is The Shock That You're Only As Well As You Are.

The Difference Between A Writer Who Toughs It Out And One Who Doesn't Is That You Push Through The Parts Where You Know That You've Just Written Seven Pages When All You're Looking For Is One Paragraph.

I Said That I Thought The Secret Of Life Was Obvious: Be Here Now, Love As If Your Whole Life Depended On It, Find Your Life's Work, And Try To Get Hold Of A Giant Panda. If You Had A Giant Panda In Your Back Yard, Anything Could Go Wrong — Someone Could Die, Or Stop Loving You, Or You Could Get Sick — And If You Could Look Outside And See This Adorable, Ridiculous, Boffo Panda, You'd Start To Laugh; You'd Be So Filled With Thankfulness And Amusement That Everything Would Be O.k. Again.

I Do Not Understand How Deeply People Seem To Like My Work - But I Love That People Feel I Have Helped Them Through Hardships, And Also Have Shared My Experience Of Living A More Spiritual And Present Life. It's So Great To Be Able To Make People Laugh, Because This Is So Often How We Get Our Selves Back.

If Something Inside Of You Is Real, We Will Probably Find It Interesting, And It Will Probably Be Universal. So You Must Risk Placing Real Emotion At The Center Of Your Work. Write Straight Into The Emotional Center Of Things. Write Toward Vulnerability. Risk Being Unliked. Tell The Truth As You Understand It. If You’re A Writer You Have A Moral Obligation To Do This. And It Is A Revolutionary Act—truth Is Always Subversive.

Thirty Years Ago My Older Brother, Who Was Ten Years Old At The Time, Was Trying To Get A Report Written On Birds That He'd Had Three Months To Write, Which Was Due The Next Day. We Were Out At Our Family Cabin In Bolinas, And He Was At The Kitchen Table Close To Tears, Surrounded By Binder Paper And Pencils And Unopened Books About Birds, Immobilized By The Hugeness Of The Task Ahead. Then My Father Sat Down Beside Him Put His Arm Around My Brother's Shoulder, And Said, "bird By Bird, Buddy. Just Take It Bird By Bird.

It's So Great To Be Able To Make People Laugh, Because This Is So Often How We Get Our Selves Back.

You Must Not Inflict Life On Someone Who Will Be Resented.

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.

We All Often Feel Like We Are Pulling Teeth, Even Those Writers Whose Prose Ends Up Being The Most Natural And Fluid. The Right Words And Sentences Just Do Not Come Pouring Out Like Ticker Tape Most Of The Time.

The Writer Is A Person Who Is Standing Apart, Like The Cheese In 'the Farmer In The Dell' Standing There Alone But Deciding To Take A Few Notes. You’re Outside, But You Can See Things Up Close Through Your Binoculars. Your Job Is To Present Clearly Your Viewpoint, Your Line Of Vision. Your Job Is To See People As They Really Are, And To Do This, You Have To Know Who You Are In The Most Compassionate Possible Sense. Then You Can Recognize Others.

Mine Was A Patchwork God, Sewn Together From Bits Of Rag And Ribbon, Eastern And Western, Pagan And Hebrew, Everything But The Kitchen Sink And Jesus.

When We Did Art With The Kids, The Demons Would Lie Down.

Almost All Good Writing Begins With Terrible First Efforts. You Need To Start Somewhere. Start By Getting Something-anything-down On Paper. A Friend Of Mine Says That The First Draft Is The Down Draft-you Just Get It Down. The Second Draft Is The Up Draft-you Fix It Up. You Try To Say What You Have To Say More Accurately. And The Third Draft Is The Dental Draft, Where You Check Every Tooth, To See If It's Loose Or Cramped Or Decayed, Or Even, God Help Us, Healthy.

Everything Was Coming Together By Coming Apart . . . It Is The Most Difficult Zen Practice To Leave People To Their Destiny, Even Though It's Painful - Just Loving Them, And Breathing With Them, And Distracting Them In A Sweet Way, And Laughing With Them . . . If Something Was Not My Problem, I Probably Did Not Have The Solution.

This Is Our Goal As Writers, I Think; To Help Others Have This Sense Of--please Forgive Me--wonder, Of Seeing Things Anew, Things That Can Catch Us Off Guard, That Break In On Our Small, Bordered Worlds.

The Worst Time In Any Writer's Life Is The Two Months Before Publication. All Writers Become Mental And Pathetic, Even Those Of Devout Faith, Who Have Some Psychological Healing To Lean Up Against, And Gorgeous Lives. All Writers Think That This Time, The Jig Is Up, And They Will Be Exposed As Frauds.

You Will Lose Someone You Can’t Live Without,and Your Heart Will Be Badly Broken, And The Bad News Is That You Never Completely Get Over The Loss Of Your Beloved. But This Is Also The Good News. They Live Forever In Your Broken Heart That Doesn’t Seal Back Up. And You Come Through. It’s Like Having A Broken Leg That Never Heals Perfectly—that Still Hurts When The Weather Gets Cold, But You Learn To Dance With The Limp.

For Me, Being A Writer Is Not An Altered State. It's Very Ponderous, And Very - It's Like Being A Shoemaker.

I Am The Woman I Grew To Be Partly In Spite Of My Mother, And Partly Because Of The Extraordinary Love Of Her Best Friends, And My Own Best Friends' Mothers, And From Surrogates, Many Of Whom Were Not Women At All But Gay Men. I Have Loved Them My Entire Life, Even After Their Passing.

If You Want To Know How God Feels About Money, Look At Whom She Gives It To.

I Have Been Somebody Who Has Not Written A Great Deal About The Truth Of My Family's Life.

I Very Rarely Read The Responses To My Salon Pieces, Because (as You May Have Noticed) The Trolls Can Be So Evil. So Violent In Their Hostility To Me And My Work. Ok, Wait, Wait, Wait. That's A Lie. I Do Read The Responses--and Get Mesmerized, Like Cobra Hypnosis. But I Laugh (mostly) At The Trolls, And Think About What Tiny Little Weenies They Must Have. (they Seem To Be Mostly Men.) And Then All These Smart, Funny People Leap To My Defense, Which Is Medicine, And Fills Me With Love And Thankfulness.

Most People's Intuitions Are Drowned Out By Folk Sayings. We Have A Moment Of Real Feeling Or Insight, And Then We Come Up With A Folk Saying That Captures The Insight In A Kind Of Wash. The Intuition May Be Real And Ripe, Fresh With Possibilities, But The Folk Saying Is Guaranteed To Be A Cliche, Stale And Self-contained.

... The Reason Life Works At All Is That Not Everyone In Your Tribe Is Nuts On The Same Day. [pp. 65-66]

I Did Not Raise My Son, Sam, To Celebrate Mother's Day. I Didn't Want Him To Feel Some Obligation To Buy Me Pricey Lunches Or Flowers, Some Annual Display Of Gratitude That You Have To Grit Your Teeth And Endure.

...[t]here Should Be A Real Sense Of Your Imagination And Your Memories Walking And Woolgathering, Tramping The Hills, Romping All Over The Place. Trust Them. Don't Look At Your Feet To See If You Are Doing It Right. Just Dance.

When God Is Going To Do Something Wonderful, He Or She Always Starts With A Hardship; When God Is Going To Do Something Amazing, He Or She Starts With An Impossibility.

...since You Can't Heal Your Own Sick Mind With Your Own Sick Mind, I Needed To Consult Somebody Else's Sick Mind.

I Don't Think You Have Time To Waste Not Writing Because You Are Afraid You Won't Be Good At It.

Perfectionism Is The Voice Of The Oppressor; The Enemy Of The People. It Will Keep You Insane Your Whole Life.

...after A Few Days At The Desk, Telling The Truth In An Interesting Way Turns Out To Be As Easy And Pleasurable As Bathing A Cat.

I Read The Same Amount Of Nonfiction And Fiction.

Fiction And Nonfiction

If We Stay Where We Are, Where We're Stuck, Where We're Comfortable And Safe, We Die There... When Nothing New Can Get In, That's Death.

Remember That You Own What Happened To You. If Your Childhood Was Less Than Ideal, You May Have Been Raised Thinking That If You Told The Truth About What Really Went On In Your Family, A Long Bony White Finger Would Emerge From A Cloud And Point To You, While A Chilling Voice Thundered, "we *told* You Not To Tell." But That Was Then. Just Put Down On Paper Everything You Can Remember Now About Your Parents And Siblings And Relatives And Neighbors, And We Will Deal With Libel Later On.

Joy Is The Best Makeup.

I Had No Interest In Being A Theologian, Especially Not A Christian, As I Had Been Raised By Progressive Atheists. We Bowed Down Every Morning To The Golden Calf Of The New York Times, Noam Chomsky, Hannah Arendt. I Tried To Get My Parents To Respect And Nourish Me, Let Alone Delight In Me, So Even Though I Secretly Loved And Believed In The Divine Something - Goodness, Good Orderly Direction, Gift Of Desperation, The Cosmic Muffin - I Wasn't Ready Yet To Commit Myself To The Study Of A Higher Power.

But It Was The Singing That Pulled Me In And Split Me Wide Open.

My Mother's Eyes Were Large And Brown, Like My Son's, But Unlike Sam's, They Were Always Frantic, Like A Hummingbird Who Can't Quite Find The Flower But Keeps Jabbing Around.

All Those Years I Fell For The Great Palace Lie That Grief Should Be Gotten Over As Quickly As Possible And As Privately. But, What I've Discovered Is That The Lifelong Fear Of Grief Keeps Us In A Barren, Isolated Place, And That Only Grieving Can Heal Grief. The Passage Of Time Will Lessen The Acuteness, But Time Alone, Without The Direct Experience Of Grief, Will Not Heal It.

Right Foot, Left Foot, Right Foot, Breathe.

[her] Work Taught Me That You Could Be All The Traditional Feminine Things -- A Mother, A Lover, A Listener, A Nurturer -- And You Could Also Be Critically Astute And Radical And Have A Minority Opinion That Was Profoundly Moral.

So I Was Doing Well Academically, And I Was A Well-ranked Tennis Player And Was The Apple Of My Handsome Father's Eye-and Then I Would Bring Home A Report Card With A B-plus On It, And My Parents Would Look At The Report Card As If I'd Flunked. "uh, Honey?" One Of Them Would Ask, Looking Perplexed. "now, This Isn't A Criticism But, If You Could Get A B-plus In Philosophy, How Much Harder Would It Have Been To Get An A-minus?"

Most Humbling Of All Is To Comprehend The Lifesaving Gift That Your Pit Crew Of People Has Been For You, And All The Experiences You Have Shared, The Journeys Together, The Collaborations, Births And Deaths, Divorces, Rehab, And Vacations, The Solidarity You Have Shown One Another. Every So Often You Realize That Without All Of Them, Your Life Would Be Barren And Pathetic. It Would Be Death Of A Salesman, Though With E-mail And Texting.

And That Almost Everyone Was Struggling To Wake Up, To Be Loved, And Not Feel So Afraid All The Time. That's What The Cars, Degrees, Booze, And Drugs Were About.

A Priest Friend Of Mine Has Cautioned Me Away From The Standard God Of Our Childhoods, Who Loves You And Guides You And Then, If You Are Bad, Roasts You: God As A High School Principal In A Gray Suit Who Never Remembered Your Name But Is Always Leafing Unhappily Through Your Files.

For Me, Jesus Is My Cleft In The Rock. He Is My Safest Friend, My Safe Totally Loving Accepting Big Brother.

The Very First Thing I Tell My New Students On The First Day Of A Workshop Is That Good Writing Is About Telling The Truth. We Are A Species That Needs And Wants To Understand Who We Are. Sheep Lice Do Not Seem To Share This Longing, Which Is One Reason They Write So Very Little. But We Do. We Have So Much We Want To Say And Figure Out.

... One Of The Immutable Laws Of Being Human Is That The People Who Show Up Are The Right People. [p. 65]

There Are Moments When I Am Writing When I Think That If Other People Knew How I Felt Right Now, They’d Burn Me At The Stake For Feeling So Good, So Full, So Much Intense Pleasure.

I Wish There Were Shortcuts To Wisdom And Self-knowledge: Cuter Abysses Or Three-day Spa Wilderness Experiences. Sadly, It Doesn't Work That Way. I So Resent This.

When Everything Starts Going Wrong All At Once, It Is To Protect Something Big And Lovely That Is Trying To Get Itself Born.

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.

No" Is A Complete Sentence.

Here's How I Became Myself: Mess, Failure, Mistakes, Disappointments, And Extensive Reading; Limbo, Indecision, Setbacks, Addiction, Public Embarrassment, And Endless Conversations With My Best Women Friends; The Loss Of People Without Whom I Could Not Live, The Loss Of Pets That Left Me Reeling, Dizzying Betrayals But Much Greater Loyalty, And Overall, Choosing As My Motto William Blake's Line That We Are Here To Learn To Endure The Beams Of Love.

Here Are The Two Best Prayers I Know: 'help Me, Help Me, Help Me' And 'thank You, Thank You, Thank You.

She Felt As If The Mosaic She Had Been Assembling Out Of Life's Little Shards Got Dumped To The Ground, And There Was No Way To Put It Back Together.

It's Funny Where We Look For Salvation, And Where We Actually Find It.

The Clipping Said Forgiveness Meant That God Is For Giving, And That We Are Here For Giving Too, And That To Withold Love Or Blessings Is To Be Completely Delusional.

Everyone Is Screwed Up, Broken, Clingy, And Scared, Even The People Who Seem To Have It More Or Less Together.

Lies Cannot Nourish Or Protect You. Only Freedom From Fear, Freedom From Lies, Can Make Us Beautiful, And Keep Us Safe.

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.

At Some Point I Started Getting Published, And Experienced A Meager Knock-kneed Standing In The Literary World, And I Started To Get Almost Everything That Many Of You Graduates Are Hoping For--except For The Money. I Got A Lot Of Things That Society Had Promised Would Make Me Whole And Fulfilled--all The Things That The Culture Tells You, From Preschool On, Will Quiet The Throbbing Anxiety Inside You. I Got Some Stature, The Respect Of Other Writers, Even A Low-grade Fame. The Culture Says These Things Will Save You, As Long As You Also Manage To Keep Your Weight Down. But The Culture Lies.

Tell The Truth As You Understand It. If You're A Writer, You Have A Moral Obligation To Do This. And It Is A Revolutionary Act - Truth Is Always Subversive.

It Is Unearned Love--the Love That Goes Before, That Greets Us On The Way. It's The Help You Receive When You Have No Bright Ideas Left, When You Are Empty And Desperate And Have Discovered That Your Best Thinking And Most Charming Charm Have Failed You. Grace Is The Light Or Electricity Or Juice Or Breeze That Takes You From That Isolated Place And Puts You With Others Who Are As Startled And Embarrassed And Eventually Grateful As You Are To Be There.

I'd Wanted To Be A Writer My Whole Life. But When I Finally Made It, I Felt Like A Greyhound Catching The Mechanical Rabbit She'd Been Chasing For So Long--discovering It Was Merely Metal, Wrapped In Cloth. It Wasn't Alive; It Had No Spirit. It Was Fake.

But Easy's Like, Who Cares? Easy's Like, How Much Is Easy Going To Get You?

Sam Said To Me The Other Day, "i Love You Like 20 Tyrannosauruses On 20 Mountaintops," And This Is The Exact Same Way In Which I Love Him.

Drugs Took Me To Places; They Were Like Portals. It's Kind Of A Cliché, But They Were Like Portals To Altered States Of Consciousness Into Ways Of Imagining The World, Or Seeing A World Beyond This World, Or Seeing A World Beyond This World That I Might Not Have Gotten To Unless I Discovered Meditation And A Very Deep, Intense Spiritual Path Based On Contemplation And Meditation.

There Is Nothing As Sweet As A Comeback, When You Are Down And Out, About To Lose, And Out Of Time.

Raising A Child, Whether Or Not It Is Yours, Is Like Nautilus Of The Heart And Soul.

We Are Going To Die, As Is Everyone We Adore - I Hate This! But The Question Is, How Do We Live As Women And Men In The Face Of This? Why Do We Let Ourselves Be So Distracted And Obsessed By Meaningless B.s. In Light Of Having One Short, Precious Life? When Are We Going To Wake Up And Be Fully Alive To Each Other And Nature And Magic And Wonder And Life With A Capital L? When Will We Stop Hitting The Snooze Button? And Then, How Alive Are We Willing To Be?

I Am Skittish About Relationships, As Most Of The Marriages I've Seen Up Close Have Been Ruinous For One Or Both Parties.

Getting Into A New Relationship Is Like Pouring Miracle-gro On Your Character Defects.

New Relationship

I Just Can't Get Over How Much Babies Cry. I Really Had No Idea What I Was Getting Into. To Tell You The Truth, I Thought It Would Be More Like Getting A Cat.

This Is The Most Profound Spiritual Truth I Know: That Even When We're Most Sure That Love Can't Conquer All, It Seems To Anyway. It Goes Down Into The Rat Hole With Us, In The Guise Of Our Friends, And There It Swells And Comforts. It Gives Us Second Winds, Third Winds, Hundredth Winds.

I Was The Angriest Daughter On Earth, And Also, One Of The Most Devoted.

No One Tells You That Your Life Is Effectively Over When You Have A Child: That You're Never Going To Draw Another Complacent Breath Again... Or That Whatever Level Of Hypochondria And Rage You'd Learned To Repress And Live With Is Going To Seem Like The Good Old Days.

Peace Is Joy At Rest. Joy Is Peace On Its Feet. Quoting Her Pastor In Salon, April 25, 2003

If You Are Hoping To Find Your Self-worth And Fulfillment In Other Peoples' Opinion Of Your Writing, You Will Never Find It.

You Should Not Bring More Items And Hurdles To The Obstacle Course.

Perfectionism Is The Voice Of The Oppressor.

Talking To The Parents Of Older Kids Was Helpful For Me, Since Parents Of Kids The Same Age As Yours Won't Admit How Horrible Their Children Are.

I Go To Church Every Sunday, Which Is Like Going To The Gas Station Once A Week And Really, Really Filling Up.

It Is In Many People's Best Interest For You Not To Find Yourself, But It Only Matters That It Is In Yours, And The Whole World's, To Proceed.

Finding Yourself

A Writer Paradoxically Seeks The Truth And Tells Lies Every Step Of The Way.

There Is Nothing You Can Buy, Achieve, Own, Or Rent That Can Fill Up That Hunger Inside For A Sense Of Fulfillment And Wonder.

I'm Kind Of A Gossip Hound, But Watching The Media Whip The Small Fires Into Giant Forest Fires So That They Can Cover The Result Is Infuriating.

They Believe That If They Do Get Published, A Wonderful New Life Is In Store. It Will Turn Out That Deep Down They Are Really Valuable People And Will Have Lots Of Money From Now On And Really Cool People Like Ethan Hawke Will Be Dropping By All The Time. But It's A Lie. Being A Published Writer Will Make Them Long To Be Only As Mentally Ill As They Are Now. Their Current Level Of Obsession And Doubt And Self-loathing Will Look Like The Good Old Days. Honest.

Evangelical Christians And I Can Sit Down And Talk One On One About How Much We Love Jesus, And Yet I'm Not Carried In Christian Bookstores.

I Woke Up Full Of Hate And Fear The Day Before The Most Recent Peace March In San Francisco. This Was Disappointing: I'd Hoped To Wake Up Feeling Somewhere Between Virginia Woolf And Wavy Gravy.

I've Written Six Novels And Four Pieces Of Nonfiction, So I Don't Really Have A Genre These Days.

When I Was A Kid, Our Family Used To Watch 'bonanza.' I Really Liked Having A Sunday Night Tv Ritual.

I Guess He'll Have To Figure Out Someday That He Is Supposed To Have This Dark Side, That It Is Part Of What It Means To Be Human, To Have The Darkness Just As Much As The Light- That In Fact The Dark Parts Make The Light Visible; Without Them, The Light Would Disappear. But I Guess He Has To Figure Other Stuff Out First, Like How To Keep His Neck From Flopping All Over The Place And How To Sit Up.

I Wish I Had Thrown Out The Bathroom Scale At Age 16. Weighing Yourself Every Morning Is Like Waking Up And Asking Dick Cheney To Validate Your Sense Of Inner Worth.

Oh, My God. What If You Wake Up Some Day, And You're 65 Or 75, And You Never Got Your Novel Or Memoir Written; Or You Didn't Go Swimming In Warm Pools Or Oceans Because Your Thighs Were Jiggly Or You Had A Nice Big Comfortable Tummy; Or You Were Just So Strung Out On Perfectionism And People-pleasing That You Forgot To Have A Big Juicy Creative Life, Of Imagination And Radical Silliness And Staring Off Into Space Like When You Were A Kid? It's Going To Break Your Heart. Don't Let This Happen.

Bird By Bird, Buddy. Just Take It Bird By Bird.

Being A Writer Is Part Of A Noble Tradition, As Is Being A Musician – The Last Egalitarian And Open Associations. No Matter What Happens In Terms Of Fame And Fortune, Dedication To Writing Is A Marching-step Forward From Where You Were Before, When You Didn’t Care About Reaching Out To The World, When You Weren’t Hoping To Contribute, When You Were Just Standing There Doing Some Job Into Which You Had Fallen.

If The Present Is Really All We Have, Then The Present Lasts Forever.

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