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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.

-Anne Lamott

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She Felt As If

Anne Lamott

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Sometimes Heaven Is Just A New Pair Of Glasses.

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

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

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

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.

Books Help Us Understand Who We Are And How We Are To Behave. They Show Us What Community And Friendship Mean; They Show Us How To Live And Die.

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

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

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.

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

It's Good To Do Uncomfortable Things. It's Weight Training For Life.

The Evidence Is In, And You Are The Verdict.

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.

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

You Don't Want To Spend Your Time Around People Who Make You Hold Your Breath. You Can't Fill Up When You're Holding Your Breath. And Writing Is About Filling Up, Filling Up When You Are Empty, Letting Images And Ideas And Smells Run Down Like Water - Just As Writing Is Also About Dealing With The Emptiness.

Quiet, Deep Breath After Any Prayer Is Another Form Of Amen.

... Everyone Has Come To Understand That Unconditional Love Is A Reality, But With As Shelf Life Of About Eight To Ten Seconds. [p. 110]

Unconditional Love

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.)

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.'

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Prayer 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.

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

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

So What Are We Supposed To Do Again, When We Hate Everything? You Stop Pretending Life Is Such Fun Or Makes Sense. It's Often Messy And Cruel And Dull, And We Do The Best We Can. It's Unfair, And Jerks Seem To Win. But You Fall In Love With A Few People. Like I Love You, Elizabeth. You're The Angel God Sent Me.

Falling In Love

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.

At Our Most Primitive We Are Storytellers And Dancers.

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 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.

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.

Greasy Food Is So Comforting When You Are Hungover.

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

What’s The Difference Between You And God? God Never Thinks He’s You.

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

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

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?

I Was Usually Filled With A Sense Of Something Like Shame Until I'd Remember That Wonderful Line Of Blake's- That We Are Here To Learn To Endure The Beams Of Love- And I Would Take A Long Deep Breath And Force These Words Out Of My Strangulated Throat: "thank You.

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

Right Foot, Left Foot, Right Foot, Breathe.

They Always Threw Their Arms Around And Hugged Me While Crying Our Yiddish Endearments. Yet None Of Them Believed In God. They Believed In Social Justice, Good Works, Israel, And Bette Midler. I Was Nearly Thirty Before I Met A Religious Jew.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I'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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laughter Is A Bubbly, Effervescent Form Of Holiness

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.

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.

But You Don't Always Get What You Want;,you Get What You Get

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'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.

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

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

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

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

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

Rationality Squeezes Out Much That Is Rich And Juicy And Fascinating.

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

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

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.

My Family Tends To Be Pretty Alcoholic And Drug-addicted.

Expectations Are Resentment Waiting To Happen.

'help' Is A Prayer That Is Always Answered.

Answered Prayers

I Think Drugs Are Part Of The Magical Possibilities Of Youth And I Wouldn't Be Here If I Had Continued With It.

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

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 Feel Incredibly Successful. I Make A Living As A Writer And Am Able To Help Support A Big Family, My Church, My Bleeding-heart Causes.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

Reproductive Rights

To Be Great, Art Has To Point Somewhere.

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

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.

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

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.

Life Is Like A Recycling Center, Where All The Concerns And Dramas Of Humankind Get Recycled Back And Forth Across The Universe. But What You Have To Offer Is Your Own Sensibility, Maybe Your Own Sense Of Humor Or Insider Pathos Or Meaning. All Of Us Can Sing The Same Song, And There Will Still Be Four Billion Different Renditions.

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

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.

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 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 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.

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

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

It Is A Violation Of Trust To Use Your Kids As Caulking For The Cracks In You.

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.

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

Everybody Thinks Their Opinion Is The Right One. If They Didn't, They Would Get A New One.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Life With Most Teenagers Was Like Having A Low-grade Bladder Infection. It Hurts, But You Had To Tough It Out.

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.

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

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

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

Life Does Not Seem To Present Itself To Me For My Convenience, To Box Itself Up Nicely So I Can Write About It With Wisdom And A Point To Make Before Putting It On A Shelf Somewhere.

She Lived In Fear Of Ifonic Endings.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 See That Children Fill The Existential Hollowness Many People Feel; That When We Have Children, We Know They Will Need Us, And Maybe Love Us, But We Don't Have A Clue How Hard It Is Going To Be.

Now, If You Ask Me, What’s Going On Is That We’re All Up To Here In It, And Probably The Most Important Thing Is That We Not Yell At One Another.

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.

...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.

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

If You Are A Writer, Or Want To Be A Writer, This Is How You Spend Your Days--listening, Observing, Storing Things Away, Making Your Isolation Pay Off. You Take Home All You've Taken In, All That You've Overheard, And You Turn It Into Gold. (or At Least You Try.)

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

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

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.

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

I Write Because Writing Is The Gift God Has Given Me To Help People In The World.

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.

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.

If God Was Giving Me A Ham, I'd Be Crazy Not To Receive It. Maybe It Was The Ham Of God, Who Takes Away The Sins Of The World.

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

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

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

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.

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

Radical Self-care Is Quantum, And Radiates Out Into The Atmosphere, Like A Little Fresh Air. It Is A Huge Gift To The World. When People Respond By Saying, “well, Isn’t She Full Of Herself,” Smile Obliquely, Like Mona Lisa, And Make Both Of You A Nice Cup Of Tea.

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.

Becoming A Writer Is About Becoming Conscious.

Nothing Can Be Delicious When You Are Holding Your Breath.

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

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

Can You Imagine The Hopelessness Of Trying To Live A Spiritual Life When You’re Secretly Looking Up At The Skies Not For Illumination Or Direction, But To Gauge, Miserably, The Odds Of Rain?

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 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.

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

I Think That Is Why We Stay Close To Our Families, No Matter How Neurotic The Members, How Deeply Annoying Or Dull- Because When People Have Seen You At Your Worst, You Don’t Have To Put On The Mask As Much.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Only Grieving Can Heal Grief; The Passage Of Time Will Lessen The Acuteness, But Time Alone, Without The Direct Experience Of Grief, Will Not Heal It.

I've Known For Years That Resentments Don't Hurt The Person We Resent, But They Do Hurt Us.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

When We Search For Something Larger Than Our Own Selves To Hook Into, We Can Come Through Whatever Life Throws At Us.

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

...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.

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.

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Shelley Morrison

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