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One Thing About Having A Baby Is That Each Step Of The Way You Simply Cannot Imagine Loving Him Any More Than You Already Do, Because You Are Bursting With Love, Loving As Much As You Are Humanly Capable Of- And Then You Do, You Love Him Even More.

-Anne Lamott

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One Thing About Having

Anne Lamott

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One Thing About Having A Baby Is That Each Step Of The Way You Simply Cannot Imagine Loving Him Any More Than You Already Do, Because You Are Bursting With Love, Loving As Much As You Are Humanly Capable Of- And Then You Do, You Love Him Even More.

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

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.

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.

Greasy Food Is So Comforting When You Are Hungover.

The Real Payoff Is The Writing Itself, That A Day When You Have Gotten Your Work Done Is A Good Day, That Total Dedication Is The Point.

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.

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

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

Anne Lamott’s Priest Friend Tom, How To Get Through: "left Foot, Right Foot, Left Foot, Breathe," He Said. "right Foot, Left Foot, Right Foot, Breathe." Salon April 25, 2003

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

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

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.

The Truth Is That Progress Is Usually Small And Sneaky.

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.

The First Draft Is The Child's Draft, Where You Let It All Pour Out And Then Let It Romp All Over The Place, Knowing That No One Is Going To See It And That You Can Shape It Later.

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?

...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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

So Rita And I Decided That The Most Subversive, Revolutionary Thing I Could Do Was To Show Up For My Life And Not Be Ashamed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Becoming A Writer Is About Becoming Conscious.

The Earth Is Rocky And Full Of Roots; It's Clay, And It Seems Doomed And Polluted, But You Dig Little Holes For The Ugly Shriveled Bulbs, Throw In A Handful Of Poppy Seeds, And Cover It All Over, And You Know You'll Never See It Again - It's Death And Clay And Shrivel, And Your Hands Are Nicked From The Rocks, Your Nails Black With Soil.

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.

Perfectionism Is The Voice Of The Oppressor, The Enemy Of The People. It Will Keep You Cramped And Insane Your Whole Life, And It Is The Main Obstacle Between You And A Shitty First Draft. I Think Perfectionism Is Based On The Obsessive Belief That If You Run Carefully Enough, Hitting Each Stepping-stone Just Right, You Won't Have To Die. The Truth Is That You Will Die Anyway And That A Lot Of People Who Aren't Even Looking At Their Feet Are Going To Do A Whole Lot Better Than You, And Have A Lot More Fun While They're Doing It.

The Problem Is Acceptance, Which Is Something We're Taught Not To Do. We're Taught To Improve Uncomfortable Situations, To Change Things, Alleviate Unpleasant Feelings. But If You Accept The Reality That You Have Been Given- That You Are Not In A Productive Creative Period- You Free Yourself To Begin Filling Up Again.

Uncomfortable Situations

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.

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

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

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

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.

You Just Have To Keep Getting Out Of Your Own Way So That Whatever It Is That Wants To Be Written Can Use You To Write It.

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

What If You Wake Up Some Day, And You're 65... And You Were Just So Strung Out On Perfectionism And People-pleasing That You Forgot To Have A Big Juicy Creative Life?

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

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 Got A Lot Of Things That Society Had Promised Would Make Me Whole And Fulfilled - All The Things That The Culture Tells You From Preschool On Will Quiet The Throbbing Anxiety Inside You - Stature, The Respect Of Colleagues, Maybe Even A Kind Of Low-grade Fame.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Coming To An End

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.

Gorgeous, Amazing Things Come Into Our Lives When We Are Paying Attention: Mangoes, Grandnieces, Bach, Ponds. This Happens More Often When We Have As Little Expectation As Possible. If You Say, "well, That's Pretty Much What I Thought I'd See," You Are In Trouble. At That Point You Have To Ask Yourself Why You Are Even Here. [...] 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.

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

When All Else Fails

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.

I Think Jesus Is Divine Love Manifest On Earth, As It Comes Through The Community Of Christians.

I Understood That The Man I Was Calling For Could Never Ever Come Back. Because I Understood That The Man That I Was Calling For Was Dead.

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.

If You're Lucky You Find Your Way Into A Spiritual Community And You Start To Find The Great Teachers Of All The Ages Who Said The Same Thing. There's Only Love, You're Made Of Love.

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

Doubt And Certainty

Most Of Me Was Glad When My Mother Died. She Was A Handful, But Not In A Cute, Festive Way. More In A Life-threatening Way, That Had Caused Me A Long Time Ago To Give Up All Hope Of Ever Feeling Good About Having Had Her As A Mother.

Most Marriages Are A Mess, And The Children Get Caught Between Two Bitter, Antagonistic Parents. My Parents Stayed Married For 27 Unhappy Years, Till Their Kids Were Grown, And This Was A Catastrophe For Us.

Dancing Almost Always Turns Out To Be A Good Idea.

I Don't Know Where To Start," One [writing Student] Will Wail. Start With Your Childhood, I Tell Them. Plug Your Nose And Jump In, And Write Down All Your Memories As Truthfully As You Can. Flannery O' Connor Said That Anyone Who Has Survived Childhood Has Enough Material To Write For The Rest Of His Or Her Life. Maybe Your Childhood Was Grim And Horrible, But Grim And Horrible Is Okay If It Is Well Done. Don't Worry About Doing It Well Yet, Though. Just Get It Down.

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.

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

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.

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

When I Was Young, I Used To Be So Jealous Of Other Girls That It Crippled Me.

When He Sees Little Kids Sitting In The Backseat Of Cars, In Those Little Car Seats That Have Steering Wheels, With Grim Expressions Of Concentration On Their Faces, Clearly Convinced That Their Efforts Are Causing The Car To Do Whatever It Is Doing, He Thinks Of Himself And His Relationship With God: God Who Drives Along Silently, Gently Amused, In The Real Driver's Seat.

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

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.)

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.

Forgiveness Means It Finally Becomes Unimportant That You Hit Back.

I Have A Lot Of Faith. But I Am Also Afraid A Lot, And Have No Real Certainty About Anything. I Remembered Something Father Tom Had Told Me--that The Opposite Of Faith Is Not Doubt, But Certainty. Certainty Is Missing The Point Entirely. Faith Includes Noticing The Mess, The Emptiness And Discomfort, And Letting It Be There Until Some Light Returns.

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?

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 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.

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

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

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

Majority Leader

I Would Seriously Rather Be In A Long Line At The Dmv Than Eat With People I Don't Know.

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.

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.

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

Obsessive Compulsive

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

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

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

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.

Almost All Good Writing Begins With Terrible First Efforts. You Need To Start Somewhere. Start By Getting Something—anything—down On Paper. What I’ve Learned To Do When I Sit Down To Work On A Shitty First Draft Is To Quiet The Voices In My Head.

After A While The Middle-aged Person Who Lives In Her Head Begins To Talk To Her Soul, The Kid.

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

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

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

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 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

Close Friendships Are One Of Life's Miracles - That A Few People Get To Know You Deeply, All Your Messy Or Shadowy Stuff Along With The Beauty And Sweetness, And They Still Love You. Not Only Still Love You, But Love You More And More Deeply. I Would Do Anything For My Closest Friends, And They Would Do Almost Anything For Me, And That Is About As Spiritual A Truth As You Can Get.

Joy Is The Best Makeup.

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.

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.

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

...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.

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.

Never Compare Your Insides To Everyone Else's Outsides.

Certainty Is Missing The Point Entirely.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

When Faced With A Crisis, Do Three Things: Breathe, Pray And Be Kind.

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

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

Write As If Your Parents Are Dead.

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]

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

The First Holy Truth In God 101 Is That Men And Women Of True Faith Have Always Had To Accept The Mystery Of God's Identity And Love And Ways. I Hate That, But It's The Truth.

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.

Love Is So Much Bigger Than Our Ignorance.

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

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.

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

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

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.

No One Is More Sentimentalized In America Than Mothers On Mother's Day, But No One Is More Often Blamed For The Culture's Bad People And Behavior.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

To Be Great, Art Has To Point Somewhere.

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.

I Am All The Ages I've Ever Been.

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.

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

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

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 Believe In Listening To The - What Calls You From Your Heart And Your Spirit And If You Do It Badly, Like Learning To Dance, You Do It Badly Or You're Going To Kick Yourself When You Grow Old And You Meant To Do It.

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

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.

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

New Relationship

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

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.

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.

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

If You Don't Die Of Thirst, There Are Blessings In The Desert. You Can Be Pulled Into Limitlessness, Which We All Yearn For, Or You Can Do The Beauty Of Minutiae, The Scrimshaw Of Tiny And Precise. The Sky Is Your Ocean, And The Crystal Silence Will Uplift You Like Great Gospel Music, Or Neil Young.

I Cry Intermittently, Like A Summer Rain. I Don't Feel Racked By The Crying; In Fact, It Hydrates Me. Then Rage Wells Up In Me, And I Want To Take A Crowbar To All The Cars In The Neighborhood.

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.

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.'

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.

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

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.

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

Expectations Are Resentments Under Construction.

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.

For Me And Most Of The Other Writers I Know, Writing Is Not Rapturous. In Fact, The Only Way I Can Get Anything Written At All Is To Write Really, Really Shitty First Drafts.

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.

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.

One Thing About Having A Baby Is That Each Step Of The Way You Simply Cannot Imagine Loving Him Any More Than You Already Do, Because You Are Bursting With Love, Loving As Much As You Are Humanly Capable Of- And Then You Do, You Love Him Even More.

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.

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

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

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 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.

Everyone Is Screwed Up, Broken, Clingy, And Scared, Even The People Who Seem To Have It More Or Less Together. They Are Much More Like You Than You Would Believe. So Try Not To Compare Your Insides To Their Outsides.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

But Grace Can Be The Experience Of A Second Wind, When Even Though What You Want Is Clarity And Resolution, What You Get Is Stamina And Poignancy And The Strength To Hang On.

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.

Butterflies Were Wind Energy Made Visible.

Being A Parent Is Absolutely Exhausting And Draining, Along With All The Joy And Love.

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.

There Are These People Who Keep Taking You In And Feeding You And Loving You And Making The World A Tiny Bit Safer Than It Feels. People Have Community And Family, But Existentially We Are Deeply Isolated.

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

Right Foot, Left Foot, Right Foot, Breathe.

Writing Takes A Combination Of Sophistication And Innocence; It Takes Conscience, Our Belief That Something Is Beautiful Because It Is Right.

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

Love Falls To Earth, Rises From The Ground, Pools Around The Afflicted. Love Pulls People Back To Their Feet. Bodies And Souls Are Fed. Bones And Lives Heal. New Blades Of Grass Grow From Charred Soil. The Sun Rises.

Falling In Love

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.

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.

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!

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.

Grace Is Having A Commitment To- Or At Least An Acceptance Of- Being Ineffective And Foolish. That Our Bottled Charm Is The Main Roadblock To Drinking That Clear Cool Glass Of Love.

You Own Everything That Happened To You. Tell Your Stories. If People Wanted You To Write Warmly About Them, They Should Have Behaved Better.

Perfection Is Shallow, Unreal, And Fatally Uninteresting.

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

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.

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

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