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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.

-Anne Lamott

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Oh, My God. What

Anne Lamott

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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.

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The Depth Of The Feeling Continued To Surprise And Threaten Me, But Each Time It Hit Again And I Bore It...i Would Discover That It Hadn't Washed Me Away.

The Miracle Is That We Are Here, That No Matter How Undone We’ve Been The Night Before, We Wake Up Every Morning And Are Still Here. It Is Phenomenal Just To Be.

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.

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'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 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

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.

...it Really Is Easier To Experience Spiritual Connection When Your Life Is In The Process Of Coming Apart.

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.

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

I've Always Understood That Meditation Had To Be Part Of - Or Was Part Of The Natural Path And So I've Always Sort Of Dabbled In It.

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

I Don't Remember Who Said This, But There Really Are Places In The Heart You Don't Even Know Exist Until You Love A Child.

Funny Inspirational

I Don't Have Any Romantic Views Of Parenting. Every Step Of The Way It's Really Hard. It's A Dangerous World, Physically And Psychologically.

Dangerous World

As A Christian And A Feminist, The Most Important Message I Can Carry And Fight For Is The Sacredness Of Each Human Life, And Reproductive Rights For All Women Are A Crucial Part Of That. It Is A Moral Necessity That We Not Be Forced To Bring Children Into The World For Whom We Cannot Be Responsible And Adoring And Present. We Must Not Inflict Life On Children Who Will Be Resented; We Must Not Inflict Unwanted Children On Society.

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.

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

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

Sometimes I Think That Jesus Watches My Neurotic Struggles, And Shakes His Head And Grips His Forehead And Starts Tossing Back Mojitos.

A Nun I Know Once Told Me She Kept Begging God To Take Her Character Defects Away From Her. After Years Of This Prayer, God Finally Got Back To Her: I'm Not Going To Take Anything Away From You, You Have To Give It To Me.

Some People May Have Thought That This Book Was Too Personal, Too Confessional. But What These People Think About Me Is None Of My Business.

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.

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.

The Best Thing About Being An Artist, Instead Of A Madman Or Someone Who Writes Letters To The Editor, Is That You Get To Engage In Satisfying Work. Even If You Never Publish A Word, You Have Something Important To Pour Yourself Into.

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

New Relationship

Do You Mind Even A Little That You Are Still Addicted To People-pleasing, And Are Still Putting Everyone Else’s Needs And Laundry And Career Ahead Of Your Creative, Spiritual Life? Giving All Your Life Force Away, To “help” And Impress. Well, Your Help Is Not Helpful, And Falls Short.

To Be Great, Art Has To Point Somewhere.

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.

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

Having A Baby Is Like Suddenly Getting The World's Worst Roommate.

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

You Can Either Practice Being Right Or Practice Being Kind.

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

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.

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.'

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.)

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.

In A Library, You Can Find Small Miracles And Truth, And You Might Find Something That Will Make You Laugh So Hard That You Will Get Shushed, In The Friendliest Way. I Have Found Sanctuary In Libraries My Whole Life, And There Is Sanctuary There Now, From The War, From The Storms Of Our Families And Our Own Minds. Libraries Are Like Mountains Or Meadows Or Creeks: Sacred Space. So This Afternoon, I'll Walk To The Library.

Again And Again I Tell God I Need Help, And God Says, 'well, Isn't That Fabulous? Because I Need Help Too. So You Go Get That Old Woman Over There Some Water, And I'll Figure Out What We're Going To Do About Your Stuff.

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

I Quit My Last Real Job, As A Writer At A Magazine, When I Was Twenty-one. That Was The Moment When I Lost My Place Of Prestige On The Fast Track, And Slowly, Millimeter By Millimeter, I Started To Get Found, To Discover Who I Had Been Born To Be, Instead Of The Impossibly Small Package, All Tied Up Tightly In Myself, That I Had Agreed To Be.

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.

All I Know Is That After 10 Years Of Being Sober, With Huge Support To Express My Pain And Anger And Shadow, 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. They Brought Me Home, To Me, To The Truth Of Me.

Forgiveness Means It Finally Becomes Unimportant That You Hit Back.

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

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

My Understanding Is That You Get To Choose Which Of Your Thoughts To Go With.

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

There Is Nothing More Touching To Me Then A Family Picture Where Everyone Is Trying To Look His Or Her Best, But You Can See What A Mess They All Really Are.

You Have To Keep Taking The Next Necessary Stitch, And The Next One, And The Next. Without Stitches, You Just Have Rags. And We Are Not Rags.

This Is One Thing They Forget To Mention In Most Child-rearing Books, That At Times You Will Just Lose Your Mind. Period.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

If I Were Going To Begin Practicing The Presence Of God For The First Time Today, It Would Help To Begin By Admitting The Three Most Terrible Truths Of Our Existence: That We Are So Ruined, And So Loved, And In Charge Of So Little.

...the Three Things I Cannot Change Are The Past, The Truth, And You.

My Writer Friends, And They Are Legion, Do Not Go Around Beaming With Quiet Feelings Of Contentment. Most Of Them Go Around With Haunted, Abused, Surprised Looks On Their Faces, Like Lab Dogs On Whom Very Personal Deodorant Sprays Have Been Tested.

Seeing Yourself In Print Is Such An Amazing Concept: You Can Get So Much Attention Without Having To Actually Show Up Somewhere... You Don't Have To Dress Up, For Instance, And You Can't Hear Them Boo You Right Away.

If You Have A Body, You Are Entitled To The Full Range Of Feelings. It Comes With The Package.

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.

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.

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.

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

In Fact, Not Forgiving Is Like Drinking Rat Poison And Then Waiting For The Rat To Die.

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

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

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

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.

Then The Singing Enveloped Me. It Was Furry And Resonant, Coming From Everyone's Very Heart. There Was No Sense Of Performance Or Judgment, Only That The Music Was Breath And Food.

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.

Perfectionism Is The Voice Of The Oppressor.

My Friend Terry Says That When You Need To Make A Decision, In Your Work Or Otherwise, And You Don’t Know What To Do, Just Do One Thing Or The Other, Because The Worst That Can Happen Is That You Will Have Made A Terrible Mistake.

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

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.

The Whistle Is Always Waiting To Be Blown, And In Some Ways, It Gets Me To Do Better Work.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Honesty Is Not Necessarily Interesting. I Don't Want To Hear About Your Dreams Or Your Acid Trips, Probably Unless You Make Them Really Interesting.

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.

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.

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

Life And Change

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.

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

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.'

Rest And Laughter Are The Most Spiritual And Subversive Acts Of All. Laugh, Rest, Slow Down.

A Hundred Years From Now? All New People.

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

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

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.

Sometimes This Human Stuff Is Slimy And Pathetic...but Better To Feel It And Talk About It And Walk Through It Than To Spend A Lifetime Being Silently Poisoned.

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.

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

It Helps To Resign As The Controller Of Your Fate. All That Energy We Expend To Keep Things Running Right Is Not What's Keeping Things Running Right. We're Bugs Struggling In The River, Brightly Visible To The Trout Below. With That Fact In Mind, People Like Me Make Up All These Rules To Give Us The Illusion That We Are In Charge. I Need To Say To Myself, They're Not Needed, Hon. Just Take In The Buggy Pleasures. Be Kind To The Others, Grab The Fleck Of Riverweed, Notice How Beautifully Your Bug Legs Scull.

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

All I Ever Wanted Since I Arrived Here On Earth Are 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.

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

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

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.

Joy Is The Best Makeup.

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.

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

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

Anything You Say From Your Heart To God Is A Prayer.

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

I Realized I Was Going To Get Through This Disappointing Service, And Anyway, You Have To Be Somewhere: Better Here, Where I Have Heard Truth Spoken So Often, Than, Say, At The Dmv, Or Home Alone, Orbiting My Own Mind. And It's Good To Be Out Where Others Can See You, So You Can't Be Your Ghastly Spoiled Self. It Forces You To Act Slightly More Elegantly, And This Improves Your Thoughts, And Thereby The World.

Nothing Can Be Delicious When You Are Holding Your Breath.

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.

A Writer Paradoxically Seeks The Truth And Tells Lies Every Step Of The Way. It's A Lie If You Make Something Up. But You Make It Up In The Name Of Truth, And Then You Give Your Heart To Expressing It Clearly.

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 Knew That The World Was A Harsh Place, And My Family Was A Mess, And Even Though I Danced As Fast As I Could, I Did Not Feel Welcome, Did Not Feel The Great Shalom. This World Was Never A Good Match For Me. But My Belief Was That There Was A Loving Magical Energy In The World - Seen In Nature's Beauty And Awesomeness, My Best Girl And Women Friends, Art, Music.

I Find Most Famous Christians To Be Full Of Themselves And Of Prejudice And Self-loathing, Masquerading As Devout Religious Belief. I Find All Fundamentalism To Be Terrifying And Very Destructive.

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?

...because When People Have Seen You At Their Worst, You Don't Have To Put On The Mask As Much.

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.

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.

...music Is About As Physical As It Gets: Your Essential Rhythm Is Your Heartbeat; Your Essential Sound, The Breath. We're Walking Temples Of Noise, And When You Add Tender Hearts To This Mix, It Somehow Lets Us Meet In Places We Couldn't Get To Any Other Way.

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

When You Pray, You Are Not Starting The Conversation From Scratch, Just Remembering To Plug Back Into A Conversation That's Always In Progress.

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

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.

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.

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

Sometimes I Think God Loves The Ones Who Most Desperately Ache And Are Most Desperately Lost - His Or Her Wildest, Most Messed-up Children - The Way You'd Ache And Love A Screwed-up Rebel Daughter In Juvenile Hall.

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.

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.

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.

I Know Some Very Great Writers, Writers You Love Who Write Beautifully And Have Made A Great Deal Of Money, And Not One Of Them Sits Down Routinely Feeling Wildly Enthusiastic And Confident. Not One Of Them Writes Elegant First Drafts. All Right, One Of Them Does, But We Do Not Like Her Very Much. We Do Not Think That She Has A Rich Inner Life Or That God Likes Her Or Can Even Stand Her. (although When I Mentioned This To My Priest Friend Tom, He Said That You Can Safely Assume You’ve Created God In Your Own Image When It Turns Out That God Hates All The Same People You Do.)

My Idea Of Absolute Happiness Is To Be In Bed On A Rainy Day, With My Blankie, My Cat, And My Dog.

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.

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.

Certainty Is Missing The Point Entirely.

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.

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.

Write As If Your Parents Are Dead.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Do Believe That God Is With Us Even When We're At Our Craziest And That This Goodness Guides, Provides, And Protects.

All Parents Are An Embarrassment To Their Kids. Often Grandparents Are The Relief. Kids Don't Have To Resist You.

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

No Matter How People Mess With You Or Let You Down, Or How You Let Yourself Down, A Good Book Means That When You Get In Bed That Night, You Have A Good Hour. I Feel Like You Pay All Day For That Hour. That's What Books Mean To Me. I Can Open This Two-dimensional , Flat White Page With Squiggly Little Black Marks On Them, And Someone Has Created This World That You're Going To Enter Into.

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.

Rituals Are A Good Signal To Your Unconscious That It Is Time To Kick In.

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.

If You Are Writing The Clearest, Truest Words You Can Find And Doing The Best You Can To Understand And Communicate, This Will Shine On Paper Like Its Own Little Lighthouse. Lighthouses Dont Go Running All Over An Island Looking For Boats To Save; They Just Stand There Shining.

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

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 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.

Mothering Has Been The Richest Experience Of My Life, But I Am Still Opposed To Mother's Day. It Perpetuates The Dangerous Idea That All Parents Are Somehow Superior To Non-parents.

Dangerous Ideas

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

I'd Like To Learn To Meditate With More Enthusiasm. I Can Sit Down And Get Quiet For 20 Minutes, But It Just Has Not Been A Part Of My Christianity At All.

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.

I'm Not Going To Change The Way People Think About Me, But I Can Say You Know What? I'm Not Going To Carry That In My Backpack.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Sometimes, No Matter How Screwed Up Things Seem, I Feel Like We're All At A Wedding. But You Can't Just Come Out And Say, We're At A Wedding! Have Some Cake! You Need To Create A World Into Which We Can Enter, A World Where We Can See This.

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

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

Reading Poetry And Reading The Great Works Of The Canon That We Were Reading In The '60s And The '70s And '80s Was Mind Altering.

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

At Our Most Primitive We Are Storytellers And Dancers.

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.

We All Know We're Going To Die; What's Important Is The Kind Of Men And Women We Are In The Face Of This.

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

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?

Left To My Own Devices, Would I Trade This For Firm Thighs, Fewer Wrinkles, A Better Memory? On Some Days. That's Why It's Such A Blessing I'm Not Left To My Own Devices. Because The Truth Is I Have Amazing Friends And A Deep Faith In God, To Whom I Can Turn. I Have A Cool Kid, A Sweet Boyfriend, Darling Pets. I've Learned To Pay Attention To Life, And To Listen. I'd Give Up All This For A Flatter Belly? Are You Crazy?

Being Enough Was Going To Have To Be An Inside Job.

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.

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

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

Learning To Love

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.

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

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

Astonishing Material And Revelation Appear In Our Lives All The Time. Let It Be. Unto Us, So Much Is Given. We Just Have To Be Open For Business.

I've Given Guys Blow Jobs Just Because I've Run Out Of Things To Talk About.' Oh, Rae. Who Hasn't

Toni Morrison Said, "the Function Of Freedom Is To Free Someone Else," And If You Are No Longer Wracked Or In Bondage To A Person Or A Way Of Life, Tell Your Story. Risk Freeing Someone Else. Not Everyone Will Be Glad That You Did. Members Of Your Family And Other Critics May Wish You Had Kept Your Secrets. Oh, Well, What Are You Going To Do?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Expectations Are Resentment Waiting To Happen.

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.

Grief, As I Read Somewhere Once, Is A Lazy Susan. One Day It Is Heavy And Underwater, And The Next Day It Spins And Stops At Loud And Rageful, And The Next Day At Wounded Keening, And The Next Day Numbness, Silence.

I've Always Thought I Could Use My Brain And My Heart To Jockey Everyone Around To The Good. But Life Is Not Jockeyable. When You Try, You Make People Infinitely Crazier Than They Already Were, Including Or Especially Yourself.

Laughter Is Carbonated Holiness.

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.

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Richard Carmona

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