Background Image

...

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.

-Anne Lamott

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

It's Incredibly Touching When

Anne Lamott

...

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.

Views: 5

Topic

More From Anne Lamott

Learning To Love Back Is The Hardest Part Of Being Alive.

Learning To Love

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.

At Our Most Primitive We Are Storytellers And Dancers.

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.

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.

Bananas Are Great, As I Believe Them To Be The Only Known Cure For Existential Dread. Also, Mother Teresa Said That In India, A Woman Dying In The Street Will Share Her Banana With Anyone Who Needs It, Whereas In America, People Amass And Hoard As Many Bananas As They Can To Sell For An Exorbitant Profit. So Half Of Them Go Bad, Anyway.

No One Can Appropriate God, Goodness, The Bible Or Jesus. It Just Seems That Way.

What An Incredible Drug Fear Is.

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

It Turned Out This Man Worked For The Dalai Lama. And She Said Gently-that They Believe When A Lot Of Things Start Going Wrong All At Once, It Is To Protect Something Big And Lovely That Is Trying To Get Itself Born-and That This Something Needs For You To Be Distracted So That It Can Be Born As Perfectly As Possible.

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.

The World Is Always Going To Be Dangerous, And People Get Badly Banged Up, But How Can There Be More Meaning Than Helping One Another Stand Up In A Wind And Stay Warm?

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.

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

My Best Teachers Were Mess, Failure, Death, Mistakes, And The People I Hated, Including Myself.

If Your Wife Locks You Out Of The House, You Don't Have A Problem With Your Door.

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.

This Business Of Having Been Issued A Body Is Deeply Confusing... Bodies Are So Messy And Disappointing.

You Want To Give Me Chocolate And Flowers? That Would Be Great. I Love Them Both. I Just Don't Want Them Out Of Guilt, And I Don't Want Them If You're Not Going To Give Them To All The People Who Helped Mother Our Children.

Everything Takes Me Forever. It's All Lurch, Flail. I Hope That Is Good News To You Writers.

Laughter Is The Key That Grace Has Arrived.

The Giants Are Usually Described As Rag Tag, Kind Of A Great Garage Sale Team, And The Democrats Are Described As The Mommies To The Republican Daddies; And Everyone Hates The Mommies, But Wait, Wait - I Didn't Intend To Get Into The Pathos And Thrill Of Being A Democratic Giants Fan.

All Criticism Hurts Me. I'm So In The Wrong Business.

I Read The Same Amount Of Nonfiction And Fiction.

Fiction And Nonfiction

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.

But You Can’t Get To Any Of These Truths By Sitting In A Field Smiling Beatifically, Avoiding Your Anger And Damage And Grief. Your Anger And Damage And Grief Are The Way To The Truth. We Don’t Have Much Truth To Express Unless We Have Gone Into Those Rooms And Closets And Woods And Abysses That We Were Told Not Go In To. When We Have Gone In And Looked Around For A Long While, Just Breathing And Finally Taking It In – Then We Will Be Able To Speak In Our Own Voice And To Stay In The Present Moment. And That Moment Is Home.

Age Has Given Me The Gift Of Me; It Just Gave Me What I Was Always Longing For, Which Was To Get To Be The Woman I've Already Dreamt Of Being. Which Is Somebody Who Can Do Rest And Do Hard Work And Be A Really Constant Companion, A Constant, Tender-hearted Wife To Myself.

Love Is So Much Bigger Than Our Ignorance.

Churches Are Good For Prayer, But So Are Garages And Cars And Mountains And Showers And Dance Floors.

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.

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.

Faith Includes Noticing The Mess, The Emptiness And Discomfort, And Letting It Be There Until Some Light Returns.

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'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.

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.

Write As If Your Parents Are Dead.

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.

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

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 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.

Plot Springs From Character... I've Always Sort Of Believed That These People Inside Me- These Characters- Know Who They Are And What They're About And What Happens, And They Need Me To Help Get It Down On Paper Because They Don't Type.

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

It's Funny: I Always Imagined When I Was A Kid That Adults Had Some Kind Of Inner Toolbox Full Of Shiny Tools: The Saw Of Discernment, The Hammer Of Wisdom, The Sandpaper Of Patience. But Then When I Grew Up I Found That Life Handed You These Rusty Bent Old Tools - Friendships, Prayer, Conscience, Honesty - And Said 'do The Best You Can With These, They Will Have To Do'. And Mostly, Against All Odds, They Do.

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

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

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.

Mothers Are Supposed To Listen And, Afterward, To Respond With Some Wisdom And Perspective, But These Things Were Not My Mother's Strong Suit.

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.

Now She And I Sit Together In Her Room And Eat Chocolate, And I Tell Her That In A Very Long Time When We Both To Go Heaven, We Should Try To Get Chairs Next To Each Other, Close To The Dessert Table.

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.

Sometimes Grace Is A Ribbon Of Mountain Air That Gets In Through The Cracks.

Nothing Heals Us Like Letting People Know Our Scariest Parts: When People Listen To You Cry And Lament, And Look At You With Love, It's Like They Are Holding The Baby Of You.

Whenever The World Throws Rose Petals At You, Which Thrill And Seduce The Ego, Beware.

It's A Great Time To Be Alive.

Prayer Is Talking To Something Or Anything With Which We Seek Union, Even If We Are Bitter Or Insane Or Broken. (in Fact, These Are Probably The Best Possible Conditions Under Which To Pray.) Prayer Is Taking A Chance That Against All Odds And Past History, We Are Loved And Chosen, And Do Not Have To Get It Together Before We Show Up.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

I'm Drawn To Almost Any Piece Of Writing With The Words 'divine Love' And 'impeachment' In The First Sentence. But I Know The Word 'divine' Makes Many Progressive People Run Screaming For Their Cute Little Lives, And So One Hesitates To Use It.

By Then I'd Figured Out The Gift Of Failure, Which Is That It Breaks Through All That Held Breath And Isometric Tension About Needing To Look Good: It's The Gift Of Feeling Floppier.

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.

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

You Know How I Always Say That Laughter Is Carbonated Holiness? Well, Robin Was The Ultimate Proof Of That, And Bubbles Are Spirit Made Visible.

Small Is How Blessings, Healing, Progress And Increase Occur.

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 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

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

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.'

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

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.

I Accidentally Forgot To Graduate From College.

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.

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

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

New Relationship

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

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

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

That Thing You Had To Force Yourself To Do-the Actual Act Of Writing-turns Out To Be The Best Part.

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

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.

Clutter And Mess Show Us That Life Is Being Lived.

When Hope Is Not Pinned Wriggling Onto A Shiny Image Or Expectation, It Sometimes Floats Forth And Opens Like One Of Those Fluted Japanese Blossoms, Flimsy And Spastic, Bright And Warm. This Almost Always Seems To Happen In Community.

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

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?

Charles Had Once Remarked That Holding Onto A Resentment Was Like Eating Rat Poison And Waiting For The Rat To Die.

To Be A Good Writer, You Not Only Have To Write A Great Deal But You Have To Care. You Do Not Have To Have A Complicated Moral Philosophy. But A Writer Always Tries, I Think, To Be A Part Of A Solution, To Understand A Little About Life And To Pass This On.

I'm Human, You're Human, Let Me Greet Your Humanness. Let's Be People Together For A While.

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.

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

Doubt And Certainty

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.

Some People Won't Go The Extra Mile, And Then On Their Birthday, When No One Makes A Fuss, They Feel Neglected And Bitter.

Going The Extra Mile

You Are Going To Feel Like Hell If You Never Write The Stuff That Is Tugging On The Sleeves In Your Heart--your Stories, Visions, Memories, Songs: Your Truth, Your Version Of Things, In Your Voice. That Is Really All You Have To Offer Us, And It's Why You Were Born.

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 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.

What Fills Us Is Real, Sweet, Dopey, Funny Life.

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

We Write To Expose The Unexposed. Most Human Beings Are Dedicated To Keeping That One Door Shut. But The Writer's Job Is To See What's Behind It, To See The Bleak Unspeakable Stuff, And To Turn The Unspeakable Into Words - Not Just Into Any Words But If We Can, Into Rhythm And Blues. You Can't Do This Without Discovering Your Own True Voice, And You Can't Find Your True Voice And Peer Behind The Door And Report Honestly And Clearly To Us If Your Parents Are Reading Over Your Shoulder.

...one Of The Worst Things About Being A Parent, For Me, Is The Self-discovery, The Being Face To Face With One's Secret Insanity And Brokenness And Rage.

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.

How Do You Begin? The Answer Is Simple: You Decide To.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Like The Desert For Short Periods Of Time, From Inside A Car, With The Windows Rolled Up, And The Doors Locked. I Prefer Beach Resorts With Room Service.

Sometimes Heaven Is Just A New Pair Of Glasses.

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

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.

Some People Seem To Understand This - That Life And Change Take Time - But I Am Not One Of Those People.

Life And Change

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!

Radical Self-care Is Quantum, And Radiates Out Into The Atmosphere, Like A Little Fresh Air.

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.

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

When What We See Catches Us Off Guard, And When We Write It As Realistically And Openly As Possible, It Offers Hope. You Look Around And Say, Wow, There's That Same Mockingbird; There's That Woman In The Red Hat Again. The Woman In The Red Hat Is About Hope Because She's In It Up To Her Neck, Too, Yet Every Day She Puts On That Crazy Red Hat And Walks To Town.

My Gratitude For Good Writing Is Unbounded; I’m Grateful For It The Way I’m Grateful For The Ocean.

And We've Read Scary Books And Watched Scary Movies And Tv Shows Together. He's Met Monsters, Ghouls, And Demons On The Page And On The Screen. There's Nothing Like Watching Anaconda With Your Best Friend Or Lying In Bed Next To Your Mother Reading Roald Dahl, Because That Way You Get To Explore Dark Stuff Safely. You Get To Laugh With It, To Step Out On The Vampire's Dance Floor And Take Him For A Spin, And Then Step Back Into Your Life. When You Make Friends With Fear, It Can't Rule You.

Perfectionism Means That You Try Desperately Not To Leave So Much Mess To Clean Up. But Clutter And Mess Show Us That Life Is Being Lived. Clutter Is Wonderfully Fertile Ground - You Can Still Discover New Treasures Under All Those Piles, Clean Things Up, Edit Things Out, Fix Things, Get A Grip. Tidiness Suggests That Something Is As Good As It's Going To Get. Tidiness Makes Me Think Of Held Breath, Of Suspended Animation, While Writing Needs To Breathe And Move.

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

People Help You Or You Help Them And When We Offer Or Receive Help, We Take In Each Other. And Then We Are Saved.

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

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

Dogs Are The Closest We Come To Knowing The Divine Love Of God On This Side Of Eternity.

I Naturally Prefer The Company Of People Who Hold Grudges, As Long As They Are Not Held Against Me.

I Didn't Write About My Mother Much In The Third Year After She Died. I Was Still Trying To Get My Argument Straight: When Her Friends Or Our Relatives Wondered Why I Was Still So Hard On Her, I Could Really Lay Out The Case For What It Had Been Like To Be Raised By Someone Who Had Loathed Herself, Her Husband, Even Her Own Name.

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.

I Do For Myself Exactly What I Would Do For You - Make A Lovely Cup Of Tea, Or A Hot Bath, Or Go Buy Myself A Fabulous Pair Of Socks. I Believe That You Take The Action, And Then The Insight Follows - I Do Loving Things For Me, Stroke My Own Shoulder, Put Myself Down For A Short Nap, And The Insight Follows: That I Am A Wild Precious Woman, A Human Merely Being, As E E Cummings Put It, Deserving Of Respect, Tenderness, Protection, Delight, And Solidarity. And That Is What Home Looks Like For Me Now.

The Truth Is That Progress Is Usually Small And Sneaky.

Writing And Reading Decrease Our Sense Of Isolation. They Deepen And Widen And Expand Our Sense Of Life: They Feed The Soul.

I Don't Write About The Intimate Details Of My Cousins And Aunts And Uncles, And My Mother And My Father Because It's Not Right To, For Me.

I Don't Think Anything Is The Opposite Of Love.

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.

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

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

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.

We Begin To Find And Become Ourselves When We Notice How We Are Already Found, Already Truly, Entirely, Wildly, Messily, Marvelously Who We Were Born To Be.

I Have A Giant Ego And Terrible Self-esteem, So I Need To Hit The Re-set Button Fairly Regularly - To Get Into Presence, And Humility, And Being Right-sized.

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

A Hundred Years From Now? All New People.

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.

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.

Now. Maybe You Think It Is Arrogant Or Self Centered, Or Ridiculous For Me To Believe That God Bothered To Wiggle A Cheap Bolt Out Of My New Used Car Because He Or She Needed To Keep Me Away For A Few Days Until Just The Moment When My Old Friend Most Needed Me To Help Her Mother Move Into Whatever Comes Next. Maybe Nothing Conscious Helped To Stall Me So That I Would Be There When I Could Be Most Useful. Or Maybe It Did. I’ll Never Know For Sure. And Anyway, It Doesn’t Really Matter.

I Love Memoirs. They Are Probably My Favorite Literary Form, Along With Biographies. The More Confessional, The Better. There Is So, So, So Little Truth In The Popular Culture, And I Am Starved And Grateful For Any I Can Find.

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

Pets Are The World To Me. I Think They Are The Most Obvious Manifestations Of Divine Love That We Are Going To See This Side Of Eternity.

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.

Listen To Your Broccoli And It Will Tell You How To Eat It.

I Don’t Know Why Life Isn’t Constructed To Be Seamless And Safe, Why We Make Such Glaring Mistakes, Things Fall So Short Of Our Expectations, And Our Hearts Get Broken And Out Kids Do Scary Things And Our Parents Get Old And Don’t Always Remember To Put Pants On Before They Go Out For A Stroll. I Don’t Know Why It’s Not More Like It Is In The Movies, Why Things Don’t Come Out Neatly And Lessons Can’t Be Learned When You’re In The Mood For Learning Them, Why Love And Grace Often Come In Such Motley Packaging.

Writing Is About Hypnotizing Yourself Into Believing In Yourself, Getting Some Work Done, Then Unhypnotizing Yourself And Going Over The Material Coldly.

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.

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.

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

Sometimes Grace Works Like Water Wings When You Feel You Are Sinking.

Age Has Given Me What I Was Looking For My Entire Life - It Gave Me Me. It Provided The Time And Experience And Failures And Triumphs And Friends Who Helped Me Step Into The Shape That Had Been Waiting For Me All My Life...i Not Only Get Along With Me Most Of The Time Now, I Am Militantly And Maternally On My Own Side.

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.

You Get Your Intuition Back When You Make Space For It, When You Stop The Chattering Of The Rational Mind.

My Mother Was A Not-too-devoted Atheist. She Went To Episcopal Church On Christmas Eve Every Year, And That Was Mostly It.

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.

Any Plot You Impose On Your Characters Will Be Onomatopoetic: Plot. I Say Don't Worry About Plot. Worry About The Characters. Let What They Say Or Do Reveal Who They Are, And Be Involved In Their Lives, And Keep Asking Yourself, Now What Happens? The Development Of Relationship Creates Plot.

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.

Let’s Think Of Reverence As Awe, As Presence In And Openness To The World…try Walking Around With A Child Who’s Going, ‘wow, Wow! Look At That Dirty Dog! Look At That Burned-down House! Look At That Red Sky!’ And The Child Points, And You Look, And You See, And You Start Going, ‘wow! Look At That Huge Crazy Hedge! Look At That Teeny Little Baby! Look At The Scary Dark Cloud!’ I Think This Is How We Are Supposed To Be In The World – Present And In Awe.

I Kept Asking God For Help, And After A While I Realized Something -- That Josh Was Not Enjoying This Either. He Was Just Trying To Take Care Of Himself, And I Made The Radical Decision To Let Him Off The Hook.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

And You Try To Quiet Your Mind So You Can Hear.

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.

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.

Laughter Is A Bubbly, Effervescent Form Of Holiness

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Certainty Is Missing The Point Entirely.

The Truth Of My Experience Is That We Are All A Lot More Alike Than We Are Different.

If You Want To Make God Laugh, Tell Her Your Plans.

We're Out There Somewhere Between The Known And The Unknown, Trying To Reel In Both For A Closer Look.

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.

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 Do Not Have Deep Theological Understanding Or Opinion, But I Do Not Read The Bible As The Literal Word Of God.

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.

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

If You Asked Me, Parents Were Supposed To Affect The Life Of Their Child In Such A Way That The Child Grows Up To Be Responsible, Able To Participate In Life And In Community.

I Like To Read Away As Much Of The Afternoon As Possible, Until Real Life Rears Its Ugly Head.

For Some Of Us, Good Books And Beautiful Writing Are Our Ultimate Solace, Even More Comforting Than Exquisite Food.

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

A Big Heart Is Both A Clunky And A Delicate Thing; It Doesn't Protect Itself And It Doesn't Hide. It Stands Out, Like A Baby's Fontanel, Where You Can See The Soul Pulse Through.

You Have To Be A Warrior And Say, "maybe It's Everyone Else's System, But It's Not Mine." (from Her Recent Interview Here, On Goodreads)

Trending Author

Gioachino Rossini

James McGreevey

Anne Rivers Siddons

Rod Blagojevich

Category