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I Have A Terrible Time During Elections. I Am Way Too Politically Involved. I Absolutely Never Argue Politics With Anyone, As It Makes Me Crazy And Full Of Judgment And Hostility. I Have Two Very Conservative Friends, Whom I Cherish And Would Entrust My Life To; We Avoid Politics Like The Plague. So In A Certain Way, It Limits How Completely We Let Ourselves Know Each Other, But This Is Just The Way It Is And It Is The Best We Can Do. And I Am Secretly Convinced That God Is A Progressive Democrat.

-Anne Lamott

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I Have A Terrible

Anne Lamott

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I Have A Terrible Time During Elections. I Am Way Too Politically Involved. I Absolutely Never Argue Politics With Anyone, As It Makes Me Crazy And Full Of Judgment And Hostility. I Have Two Very Conservative Friends, Whom I Cherish And Would Entrust My Life To; We Avoid Politics Like The Plague. So In A Certain Way, It Limits How Completely We Let Ourselves Know Each Other, But This Is Just The Way It Is And It Is The Best We Can Do. And I Am Secretly Convinced That God Is A Progressive Democrat.

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Pay Attention To The Beauty Surrounding You.

You've Got To Learn To Let Go And Let Your Children Fall, And Fail. If You Try To Protect Them From Hurt, And Always Rush To Their Side With Band-aids, They Won't Learn About Life, And What Is True, What Works, What Helps, And What Are Real Consequences Of Certain Kinds Of Behavior. When They Do Get Hurt, Which They Will, They Won't Know How To Take Care Of Their Grown Selves. They Won't Even Know Where The Aspirin Is Kept.

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.

What If We Gave Fifty Percent Of Our Discretionary Budget To The World’s Poor And Then Counted On The Moral Power Of That Action To Protect Us?

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.

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

Try Looking At Your Mind As A Wayward Puppy That You Are Trying To Paper Train. You Don't Drop-kick A Puppy Into The Neighbor's Yard Every Time It Piddles On The Floor. You Just Keep Bringing It Back To The Newspaper.

Part Of Me Loves And Respects Men So Desperately, And Part Of Me Thinks They Are So Embarrassingly Incompetent At Life And In Love. You Have To Teach Them The Very Basics Of Emotional Literacy. You Have To Teach Them How To Be There For You, And Part Of Me Feels Tender Toward Them And Gentle, And Part Of Me Is So Afraid Of Them, Afraid Of Any More Violation.

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

Two Things Put Me In The Spirit To Give. One Is That I Have Come To Think Of Everyone With Whom I Come Into Contast As A Patient In The Emergency Room. I See A Lot Of Gaping Wounds And Dazed Expressions. Or, As Marianne Moore Put It, "the World's An Orphan's Home." And This Feels More True Than Almost Anything Else I Know. But So Many Of Us Can Be Soothed By Writing: Think Of How Many Times You Have Opened A Book, Read One Line, And Said, "yes!" And I Want To Give People That Feeling, Too, Of Connection, Communication.

The Solution Is Always Spiritual, And It Almost Never Has Anything To Do With The Problem ... Laughter Is Carbonated Holiness.

I'm Here To Be Me, Which Is Taking A Great Deal Longer Than I Had Hoped.

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.

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.

These Are Pictures Of The People In My Family Where We Look Like The Most Awkward And Desperate Folk You Ever Saw, Poster Children For The Human Condition.

I Also Learned That You Didn’t Come Onto This Earth As A Perfectionist Or Control Freak. You Weren’t Born A Person Of Cringe And Contraction. You Were Born As Energy, As Life, Made Of The Same Stuff As Stars, Blossoms, Breezes. You Learned Contraction To Survive, But That Was Then. You Have Paid Through The Nose-paid But Good. It Is Now Your Turn To Reap.

The Road To Enlightenment Is Long And Difficult, And You Should Try Not To Forget Snacks And Magazines.

E.l. Doctorow Said Once Said That 'writing A Novel Is Like Driving A Car At Night. You Can See Only As Far As Your Headlights, But You Can Make The Whole Trip That Way.' You Don't Have To See Where You're Going, You Don't Have To See Your Destination Or Everything You Will Pass Along The Way. You Just Have To See Two Or Three Feet Ahead Of You. This Is Right Up There With The Best Advice On Writing, Or Life, I Have Ever Heard.

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.

I'm Very Successful, But There Are 50,000 General Interest Books Published Every Year. If You Don't Want To Read Mine, There Are Others.

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.

There Is Something So Tender About This To Me, About Being Willing To Have Your Makeup Wash Off, Your Eyes Tear Up, Your Nose Start To Run. Its Tender Partly Because It Harkens Back To Infancy, To Your Mother Washing Your Face With Love And Lots Or Water, Tending To You, Making You Clean All Over Again.

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 Believe That Discipline And Self-love Are The Total Secrets To Freedom.

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.

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.

If I Have A Huge Audience, I'd Like A Bigger Audience; Maybe Slightly A Slightly More Illustrious Audience.

Without Using The Word, Everyone Started Forgiving Each Other Again. Just Like That, From The No Of All Nothingness: You Have A Big Tense Mess And Out Of It Comes Some Joy. It Must Be Magic.

One Line Of Dialogue That Rings True Reveals Character In A Way That Pages Of Description Can't.

My Mind Is A Neighborhood I Try Not To Go Into Alone.

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

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.

This Is Who I Want To Be In The World. This Is Who I Think We Are Supposed To Be, People Who Help Call Forth Human Beings From Deep Inside Hopelessness.

I Can Never Tell What I'm Doing When I'm In The Middle Of Publication Because I Have No Confidence. I Have Terrible Self-esteem, Along With Boundless Narcissism.

Grace Means You're In A Different Universe From Where You Had Been Stuck, When You Had Absolutely No Way To Get There On Your Own.

Different Universes

I'm A Terrible Christian And Meditating Is Very Hard For Me, And I Do It. I Do It Badly, Like I Do A Lot Of Things. I Believe In Doing Things Badly.

I Don't See Myself As A Deep Philosopher. The Things I Write About Tend To Be What We All Have To Face, Or Consider, Or Experience, That I Talk About With My Friends And Brothers. It's Universal Stuff, Told In My Own Voice, My Own Details And Truth, Which Is All I Have To Offer.

Joy Is The Best Makeup. But A Little Lipstick Is A Close Runner-up.

No Matter What Circumstances, It's Hard To Be A Parent And Maintain A Sense Of Self And Identity In The World.

I Write Everything As A Wake-up Call To Myself And Others, To Anyone Who May Have Gotten Tired Of Hitting The Snooze Button.

Write Regularly, Whether You Feel Like Writing Or Not, And Whether You Think What You're Writing Is Any Good Or Not.

If You Don't Believe In God, It May Help To Remember This Great Line Of Geneen Roth's: That Awareness Is Learning To Keep Yourself Company. And Then Learn To Be More Compassionate Company, As If You Were Somebody You Are Fond Of And Wish To Encourage. I Doubt That You Would Read A Close Friend's Early Efforts And, In His Or Her Presence, Roll Your Eyes And Snicker. I Doubt That You Would Pantomime Sticking Your Finger Down Your Throat. I Think You Might Say Something Along The Lines Of, 'good For You. We Can Work Out Some Of The Problems Later, But For Now, Full Steam Ahead!

Why Couldn't Jesus Command Us To Obsess Over Everything, To Try To Control And Manipulate People, To Try Not To Breathe At All, Or To Pay Attention, Stomp Away To Brood When People Annoy Us, And Then Eat A Big Bag Of Hershey's Kisses In Bed?

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.

You Simply Keep Putting Down One Damn Word After The Other, As You Hear Them, As They Come To You. You Can Either Set Brick As A Laborer Or As An Artist.

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.

Gratitude, Not Understanding, Is The Secret To Joy And Equanimity.

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.

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.

You Have To Make Mistakes To Find Out Who You Aren't. You Take The Action, And The Insight Follows: You Don't Think Your Way Into Becoming Yourself.

One Thing I Know For Sure About Raising Children Is That Every Single Day A Kid Needs Discipline.... But Also Every Single Day A Kid Needs A Break.

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

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.

My Coming To Faith Did Not Start With A Leap But Rather A Series Of Staggers From What Seemed Like One Safe Place To Another. Like Lily Pads, Round And Green, These Places Summoned And Then Held Me Up While I Grew. Each Prepared Me For The Next Leaf On Which I Would Land, And In This Way I Moved Across The Swamp Of Doubt And Fear.

Having A Child As A Single Mother Was A Crucible - Maybe This Is True For All Parents. I Got Rid Of So Much Stuff That Didn't Really Matter In The Scheme Of Things-like Throwing Stuff Out Of An Airplane That Kept Me Flying Too Low. What Was Left Was Essential, I.e. Not A Lot Of Extraneous Stuff That Had Kept Me Busy And People-pleasing. I Just Didn't Have The Luxury Of Wasting My Life Force On So Much Stupidity And Distraction. That Made Me Strong.

I Was Raised With No Religious Training Or Influence. Except The Influence Was To Be A Moral And Ethical Person At The Secular Level. And To Be A Peace Marcher, An Activist For Civil Rights, Peace And Justice.

And Yet, I Do Believe There Is Ultimately Meaning In The Chaos, And Also In The Doldrums. What I Resist Is Not The Truth But When People Put A Pretty Bow On Scary Things Instead Of Saying, 'this Is A Nightmare. I Hate Everything. I’m Going To Go Hide In The Garage.'

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.

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.

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

I Have A Terrible Time During Elections. I Am Way Too Politically Involved. I Absolutely Never Argue Politics With Anyone, As It Makes Me Crazy And Full Of Judgment And Hostility. I Have Two Very Conservative Friends, Whom I Cherish And Would Entrust My Life To; We Avoid Politics Like The Plague. So In A Certain Way, It Limits How Completely We Let Ourselves Know Each Other, But This Is Just The Way It Is And It Is The Best We Can Do. And I Am Secretly Convinced That God Is A Progressive Democrat.

Dancing Almost Always Turns Out To Be A Good Idea.

I Don't Want Something Special. I Want Something Beautifully Plain.

There Is A Door We All Want To Walk Through And Writing Can Help You Find It And Open It.

When We're Dealing With The People In Our Family - No Matter How Annoying Or Gross They May Be, No Matter How Self-inflicted Their Suffering May Appear, No Matter How Afflicted They Are With Ignorance, Prejudice Or Nose Hairs - We Give From The Deepest Parts Of Ourselves.

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

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 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.

She Lived In Fear Of Ifonic Endings.

You Know, We're Often Ashamed Of Asking For So Much Help Because It Seems Selfish Or Petty Or Narcissistic, But I Think, If There's A God -- And I Believe There Is -- That God Is There To Help. That's What God's Job Is.

I Got One Of The Five Golden Tickets To Be A Writer, And I Take That Seriously. I Don't Love My Own Work At All, But I Love My Own Self. I Love That I've Been Given The Chance To Capture The Stories That Come Through Me.

Writing Is How I Communicate My Deepest Beliefs, And What I Hope Are Helpful Observations About Our Dual Citizenship, As Children Of God, As Regular Old Mixed-up, Worried, Flawed, Precious Human Beings.

I Do Know The Sorrow Of Being Ordinary, And That Much Of Our Life Is Spent Doing The Crazy Mental Arithmetic Of How, At Any Given Moment, We Might Improve, Or At Least Disguise Or Present Our Defects And Screw-ups In Either More Charming Or More Intimidating Ways.

I Think This Is How We Are Supposed To Be In The World-present And In Awe.

Joy Is The Best Makeup.

It's Incredibly Touching When Someone Who Seems So Hopeless Finds A Few Inches Of Light To Stand In And Makes Everything Work As Well As Possible. All Of Us Lurch And Fall, Sit In The Dirt, Are Helped To Our Feet, Keep Moving, Feel Like Idiots, Lose Our Balance, Gain It, Help Others Get Back On Their Feet, And Keep Going.

I Loved Every Second Of Catholic Church. I Loved The Sickly Sweet Rotting-pomegranate Smells Of The Incense. I Loved The Overwrought Altar, The Birdbath Of Holy Water, The Votive Candles; I Loved That There Was A Poor Box, The Stations Of The Cross Rendered In Stained Glass On The Windows.

The Society To Which We Belong Seems To Be Dying Or Is Already Dead. I Don't Mean To Sound Dramatic, But Clearly The Dark Side Is Rising. Things Could Not Have Been More Odd And Frightening In The Middle Ages. But The Tradition Of Artists Will Continue No Matter What Form The Society Takes. And This Is Another Reason To Write: People Need Us, To Mirror For Them And For Each Other Without Distortion-not To Look Around And Say, 'look At Yourselves, You Idiots!,' But To Say, 'this Is Who We Are.

E-books Are Great For Instant Gratification - You See A Review Somewhere Of A Book That Interests You, And You Can Start Reading It Five Minutes Later.

Very Few Writers Really Know What They Are Doing Until They Have Done It.

All These People Keep Waxing Sentimental About How Fabulously Well I Am Doing As A Mother, How Competent I Am, But I Feel Inside Like When You're First Learning To Put Nail Polish On Your Right Hand With Your Left. You Can Do It, But It Doesn't Look All That Great Around The Cuticles.

Grace Arrived, Like The Big, Loopy Stitches With Which A Grandmotherly Stranger Might Baste Your Hem Temporarily.

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.

Pastor Veronica Told The Story Of A Sparrow Lying In The Street With Its Legs Straight Up In The Air, Straining. A Warhorse Walks Up To It, And Says, 'what On Earth Are You Doing?' The Sparrow Replies, 'i Heard The Sky Was Falling, And I Wanted To Help.'the Warhorse Sneers-- 'do You Really Think You're Going To Hold Back The Sky, With Those Scrawny Little Legs?' And The Sparrow Says, 'one Does What One Can.'

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.

Mostly What Happens In The Novels Never Happened In Real Life.

I Spend Most Of My Time Alone, Because I So Value And Thrive In The Quiet. Heaven.

Dialogue That Is Written In Dialect Is Very Tiring To Read. If You Can Do It Brilliantly, Fine. If Other Writers Read Your Work And Rave About Your Use Of Dialect, Go For It. But Be Positive That You Do It Well, Because Otherwise It Is A Lot Of Work To Read Short Stories Or Novels That Are Written In Dialect. It Makes Our Necks Feel Funny.

You Don't Always Have To Chop With The Sword Of Truth. You Can Point With It Too.

Perfection Is Shallow, Unreal, And Fatally Uninteresting.

One Of The Gifts Of Being A Writer Is That It Gives You An Excuse To Do Things, To Go Places And Explore. Another Is That Writing Motivates You To Look Closely At Life, At Life As It Lurches By And Tramps Around.

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.

I Love Readings And My Readers, But The Din Of Voices Of The Audience Gives Me Stage Fright, And The Din Of Voices Inside Whisper That I Am A Fraud, And That The Jig Is Up. Surely Someone Will Rise Up From The Audience And Say Out Loud That Not Only Am I Not Funny And Helpful, But I'm Annoying, And A Phony.

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

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.

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

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 Am All The Ages I've Ever Been.

I Used To Tell My Writing Students That They Must Write The Books They Wished They Could Come Upon - Because Then The Books They Hungered And Thirsted For Would Exist.

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

We Were Raised To Believe In Books, Music, And Nature.

I'm All Over The Place, Up And Down, Scattered, Withdrawing, Trying To Find Some Elusive Sense Of Serenity." The World Can't Give That Serenity. The World Can't Give Us Peace. We Can Only Find It In Our Hearts." I Hate That." I Know. But The Good News Is That By The Same Token, The World Can't Take It Away.

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

I Honestly Think That In Order To Be A Writer You Have To Learn To Be Reverent. If Not, Why Are You Writing? Why Are You Here?

Alice Adams Wrote A Sweet Note To Me After My First Novel Came Out When I Was 26, And I Was So Blown Away That I Sent Her A Bunch Of Stamps By Return Mail. I Have No Idea What I Was Thinking. It Was A Star-struck Impulse.

A Man Dies And Goes To Heaven. He Is Being Shown Around By An Angel. Everything Is Just So Sweet And Gentle, The Total Golden Tender Presence Of God Everywhere, A Pond Over There, A Beautiful Field There, And Some Hills For People Who Like To Hike, And This Expansiveness In Every Direction Of Sky And Light And Physical Beauty. And There Is This Section Separated From The Rest; It Has Beautiful High Walls. The Man Who's Just Come To Heaven Says, "what's Over There?" The Angel Says, "that's For The Fundamentalists. They Don't Consider It Heaven If Anyone Else Got In.

The Mix In Our Rooms Is So Touching: The Clutter And The Cracks In The Wall Belie A Bleakness Or Brokenness In Our Lives; While Photos And A Few Rare Objects Show Our Pride, Our Rare Shining Moments ... These Rooms Are Future Ruins

You Fall So Deeply In Love With Your Grandbaby. It's So So So Much Easier Than Being A Parent, Because You Really Don't Have Much Responsibility. And Just When You Are At The End Of Your Rope With Exhaustion, The Parents Take The Baby Away. So It's The Best Of Both Worlds.

I Am A Terrible And Lazy Christian. I Do Not Believe That The Bible Is The Literal Word Of God. I Just Skip About A Third Of It. I Love The Parts I Love So Much, But I Find A Lot Of It Just Appalling. When A Right-wing Person Quotes A Passage In Order To Attack And Stigmatize Another Person--or Group Of People--i Just Roll My Eyes.

My Idea Of Everything Going Smoothly On An Airplane Is (a) That I Not Die In A Slow-motion Fiery Crash Or Get Stabbed To Death By Terrorists And (b) That None Of The Other Passengers Try To Talk To Me. All Conversation Should End At The Moment The Wheels Leave The Ground.

We Must Not Inflict Life On Children Who Will Be Resented; We Must Not Inflict Unwanted Children On Society.

Reproductive Rights

Forgiveness Is Giving Up All Hope Of Having Had A Better Past.

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

The Beauty Of Modesty ... A Virtue The World Doesn't Have Much Truck With: One Ordinary Flower In A Vase, As Opposed To A Bouquet.

I Get To Tell My Truth. I Get To Seek Meaning And Realization. I Get To Live Fully, Wildly, Imperfectly. That's Why I'm Alive. And All I Actually Have To Offer As A Writer Is My Version Of Life. Every Single Thing That Has Happened To Me Is Mine.

That's About 90 Percent Of My Theological Life - Radical Self-care. Put Your Own Oxygen Mask On First. I Watch The Self-talk That Goes Through My Mind, And If I Am Being Critical With Myself, I Shake Myself Out Of It.

My Father Was A Writer, So I Grew Up Writing And Reading And I Was Really Encouraged By Him.

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

You Can Get The Monkey Off Your Back, But The Circus Never Leaves Town

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.

If There Is One Door In The Castle You Have Been Told Not To Go Through, You Must. Otherwise, You'll Just Be Rearranging Furniture In Rooms You've Already Been In.

Inspirational Life

He Told Me About His Monster. His Sounded Just Like Mine Without Quite So Much Mascara. When People Shine A Little Light On Their Monster, We Find Out How Similar Most Of Our Monsters Are.

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 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.

My Experience As A Writer Is That You Really Do Write Seven And Eight Pages To Find The Paragraph You Were After All Along.

I Have A Very Dark Sense Of Humor. I Swear. I Have A Very Playful Relationship With Jesus.

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.

We Are Not Here To See Through One Another, But To See One Another Through.

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.

I Am Going To Try To Pay Attention To The Spring. I Am Going To Look Around At All The Flowers, And Look Up At The Hectic Trees. I Am Going To Close My Eyes And Listen.

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.

You Were Loved Because God Loves, Period. God Loved You, And Everyone, Not Because You Believed In Certain Things, But Because You Were A Mess, And Lonely, And His Or Her Child. God Loved You No Matter How Crazy You Felt On The Inside, No Matter What A Fake You Were; Always, Even In Your Current Condition, Even Before Coffee. God Loves You Crazily, Like I Love You...like A Slightly Overweight Auntie, Who Sees Only Your Marvelousness And Need.

Slowly, After Dozens Of Rejection Slips And Failures And False Starts And Postponed Dreams - What Langston Hughes Called Dreams Deferred - I Stepped Onto The Hallowed Ground Of Being A Published Novelist, And Then 15 Years Later, I Even Started To Make Real Money.

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.

I Know That If I Feel Any Deprivation Or Fear [about Money], The Solution Is To Give. The Solution Is To Go Find Some Mothers On The Streets Of San Raphael And Give Them Tens And Twenties And Mail Off Another $50 To Doctors Without Borders To Use For The Refugees In Kosovo. Because I Know That Giving Is The Way We Can Feel Abundant. Giving Is The Way That We Fill Ourselves Up.... For Me The Way To Fill Up Is Through Service And Sharing And Getting Myself To Give More Than I Feel Comfortable Giving.

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

I Used To Love To Untangle Chains When I Was A Child. I Had Thin, Busy Fingers, And I Never Gave Up. Perhaps There Was A Psychiatric Component To My Concentration But Like Much Of My Psychic Damage, This Worked To Everyone's Advantage.

Becoming A Writer Is About Becoming Conscious.

Get To Know Your Characters As Well As You Can Let There Be Something At Stake, And Then Let The Chips Fall Where They May.

So How On Earth Can I Bring A Child Into The World, Knowing That Such Sorrow Lies Ahead, That It Is Such A Large Part Of What It Means To Be Human? I'm Not Sure. That's My Answer: I'm Not Sure.

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?

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.

Maybe It's Wishful Thinking, This Snaggly Faith Of Mine, Or Maybe It's Miles Davis Saying, Don't Play What's There, Play What's Not There.

Your Unconscious Can't Work When You Are Breathing Down Its Neck.

To Be Engrossed By Something Outside Ourselves Is A Powerful Antidote For The Rational Mind, The Mind That So Frequently Has Its Head Up Its Own Ass.

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.

Intelligence, Goodness, Humanity, Excitement, Serenity. Over Time, These Are The Things That Change The Musculature Of Your Face, As Do Laughter, And Animation, And Especially Whatever Peace You Can Broker With The Person Inside. It's Furrow, Pinch, And Judgement That Make Us Look Older - Our Mothers Were Right. They Said That If You Made Certain Faces, They Would Stick, And They Do. But Our Mothers Forgot That Faces Of Kindness And Integrity Stick As Well.

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

Little By Little, In Telling Sam All These Details, I Got To See The Bigger Point Of Baseball, That It Can Give Us Back Ourselves. We’re A Crowd Animal, A Highly Gregarious, Communicative Species, But The Culture And The Age And All The Fear That Fills Our Days Have Put Almost Everyone Into Little Boxes, Each Of Us All Alone. But Baseball, If We Love It, Gives Us Back Our Place In The Crowd. It Restores Us.

Expectations Are Resentment Waiting To Happen.

So A Moral Position Is Not A Message. A Moral Position Is A Passionate Caring Inside You.

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.

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

I Accidentally Forgot To Graduate From College.

Mattie Sat At The Table, Obsessing, Orbiting Around Herself. She Was Sick Of Her Worried, Hostile Mind. It Would Have Killed Her Long Before, She Felt, If It Hadn't Needed The Transportation.

I Liked Those Ladies! They Were Helpers, And They Danced.' These Are The Words I Want On My Gravestone: That I Was A Helper, And That I Danced.

[s]he Believed That The Buddhists Were Right–that If You Want, You Will Suffer; If You Love, You Will Grieve. (68)

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

Almost All Good Writing Begins With Terrible First Efforts. You Need To Start Somewhere.

My Parents, And Librarians Along The Way, Taught Me About The Space Between Words; About The Margins, Where So Many Juicy Moments Of Life And Spirit And Friendship Could Be Found. In A Library, You Could Find Miracles And Truth And You Might Find Something That Would Make You Laugh So Hard That You Get Shushed, In The Friendliest Way.

We're All Afraid Of The Same Stuff. Mostly We're Afraid That We're Secretly Not Okay, That We're Disgusting, Or Frauds, Or About To Be Diagnosed With Cancer. ... We Want To Teach You How To Quiet The Yammer ... How You Can Create Comfort, Inside And Outside, How You Can Get Warm, How You Can Feed Yourself. And Even Learn To Get Through Silence. ... There Is A Wilderness Inside You, And A Banquet. Both. [p. 253]

The Stuff I Write About Is Pretty Universal, The Things My Closest Friends And I Talk About - Our Anxiety About Being Here On This Scary Planet, During These Scary Times, As Vulnerable As Kittens, Having Lost So Many People I Couldn't Live Without.

You Own Everything That Happened To You. Tell Your Stories.

My Mother Might Find A Thin Gold Chain At The Back Of A Drawer, Wadded Into An Impossibly Tight Knot, And Give It To Me To Untangle. It Would Have A Shiny, Sweaty Smell, And Excite Me: Gold Chains Linked You To The Great Fairy Tales And Myths, To Arabia, And India; To The Great Weight Of The World, But Lighter Than A Feather.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Problem With God - Or At Any Rate, One Of The Top Five Most Annoying Things About God - Is That He Or She Rarely Answers Right Away.

My Father Was A Writer, So I Grew Up Writing And Reading And I Was Really Encouraged By Him. I Had Some Sort Of Gift And When It Came Time To Try To Find A Publisher I Had A Little Bit Of An "in" Because I Had His Agent I Could Turn To, To At Least Read My Initial Offerings When I Was About 20. But The Only Problem Was That They Were Just Awful, They Were Just Terrible Stories And My Agent, Who Ended Up Being My Agent, Was Very, Very Sweet About It, But It Took About Four Years Until I Actually Had Something Worth Trying To Sell.

I Can Tell You That What You're Looking For Is Already Inside You.

I Am A Terrible And Lazy Christian. I Do Not Believe That The Bible Is The Literal Word Of God. I Just Skip About A Third Of It.

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

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.

The Grief And Tears Didn't Wash Me Away. They Gave Me My Life Back! They Cleansed Me, Baptized Me, Hydrated The Earth At My Feet.

Sometimes Heaven Is Just A New Pair Of Glasses.

Frederick Buechner Is One Of My Favorite Writers. The Eyes Of The Heart Is Beautiful And Wise, Full Of Insight, Charm, And Tenderness.

Laughter Is A Bubbly, Effervescent Form Of Holiness

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.

Never Compare Your Insides To Everyone Else's Outsides.

My Deepest Belief Is That To Live As If We're Dying Can Set Us Free. Dying People Teach You To Pay Attention And To Forgive And Not To Sweat The Small Things.

What People Somehow Forgot To Mention When We Were Children Was That We Need To Make Messes In Order To Find Out Who We Are And Why We Are Here.

Here Are The Two Best Prayers I Know: 'help Me, Help Me, Help Me,' And 'thank You, Thank You, Thank You.' A Woman I Know Says, For Her Morning Prayer, 'whatever,' And Then For The Evening, 'oh, Well,' But Has Conceded That These Prayers Are More Palatable For People Without Children.

[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.

I Was Reminded Of The Four Immutable Laws Of The Spirit: Whoever Is Present Are The Right People. Whenever It Begins Is The Right Time. Whatever Happens Is The Only Thing That Could Have Happened. And When It's Over, It's Over.

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

This Is What Separates Artists From Ordinary People: The Belief, Deep In Our Hearts, That If We Build Our Castles Well Enough, Somehow The Ocean Won't Wash Them Away. I Think This Is A Wonderful Kind Of Person To Be.

It Is Hard To Remember That You Are A Cherished Spiritual Being When You're Burping Up Apple Fritters And Cheetos.

Looking Back On The God My Friend Believed In, He Seems A Little Erratic, Not Entirely Unlike Her Father - God As Borderline Personality.

If Our Lives Are Made Up Of A String Of A Thousand Moments, At Some Of Those Moments We Look A Lot More Spiritually Evolved Than At Others.

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

I Am An Aries. Although I Do Not Believe In Astrology, I Think This Is Exactly The Right Sign To Have Been Born Under.

I Took Notes On The People Around Me, In My Town, In My Family, In My Memory. I Took Notes On My Own State Of Mind, My Grandiosity, The Low Self-esteem. I Wrote Down The Funny Stuff I Overheard. I Learned To Be Like A Ship's Rat, Veined Ears Trembling, And I Learned To Scribble It All Down.

There Is Ecstasy In Paying Attention. You Can Get Into A Kind Of Wordsworthian Openness To The World, Where You See In Everything The Essence Of Holiness.

And My Fear Of Failure Has Been Lifelong And Deep. If You Are What You Do- And I Think My Parents May Have Accidentally Given Me This Idea- And You Do Poorly, What Then? It’s Over; You’re Wiped Out. All Those Prophecies You Heard In The Dark Have Come True, And People Can See The Real You, See What A Schmendrick You Are, What A Fraud.

Jealousy Is Such A Direct Attack On Whatever Measure Of Confidence You’ve Been Able To Muster. But If You Continue To Write, You Are Probably Going To Have To Deal With It, Because Some Wonderful, Dazzling Successes Are Going To Happen For Some Of The Most Awful, Angry, Undeserving Writers You Know-people Who Are, In Other Words, Not You.

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

Some People Wanted To Get Rich Or Famous, But My Friends And I Wanted To Get Real. We Wanted To Get Deep. (also, I Suppose, We Wanted To Get Laid.)

Every Woman's Path Is Difficult, And Many Mothers Were As Equipped To Raise Children As Wire Monkey Mothers. I Say That Without Judgment: It Is, Sadly, True. An Unhealthy Mother's Love Is Withering.

When You're Conscious And Writing From A Place Of Insight And Simplicity And Real Caring About The Truth, You Have The Ability To Throw The Lights On For Your Reader.

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