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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?

-Anne Lamott

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We Are Going To

Anne Lamott

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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?

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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.

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Expectations Are Resentments Under Construction.

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

At Our Most Primitive We Are Storytellers And Dancers.

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

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

Anything You Say From Your Heart To God Is A Prayer. But "why" Is Rarely A Useful Question. When Job Keeps Asking God Why He Has Had Such Loss And Suffering, God Says, "you Wouldn't Understand." I Always Want To Know Why, And I Almost Never Have A Good Answer.

Shirley Jackson Said That A Confused Reader Is An Antagonistic Reader, And I Live By That. It's Okay To Start Anywhere, And To Let Yourself Write A Big Sloppy Overly-detailed First Draft. You Just Jump In, Knowing That The Water Will Be Cold At First, But No One Is Making You Swim.

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

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.

I Do Not At All Understand The Mystery Of Grace - Only That It Meets Us Where We Are But Does Not Leave Us Where It Found Us.

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.

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.

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

We Want A Sense That An Important Character, Like A Narrator, Is Reliable. We Want To Believe That A Character Is Not Playing Ages Or Being Coy Or Being Manipulative, But Is Telling The Truth To The Best Of His Or Her Ability...we Do Not Wish To Be Crudely Manipulated...we Want To Be Massaged By A Masseur, Not Whapped By A Carpet Beater.

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

My Heart Was Broken And My Head Was Just Barely Inhabitable

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

I Am Not Writing To Try And Convert People To Fundamental Christianity. I Am Just Trying To Share My Experience, Strength And Hope, That Someone Who Is As Messed Up And Neurotic And Scarred And Scared Can Be Fully Accepted By Our Dear Lord, No Questions Asked.

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

Hope Begins In The Dark.

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.

Summer Nearly Does Me In Every Year. It's Too Hot And The Light Is Unforgiving And The Days Go On Way Too Long.

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

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

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

Your Inside Person Doesn’t Age. Your Inside Person Is Soul, Is Heart, In The Eternal Now, The Ageless, The Old, The Young, All The Ages You’ve Ever Been.

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

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'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.

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.

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Grief Is Just So Scary.... If We Finally Begin To Cry All Those Suppressed Tears, They Will Surely Wash Us Away Like The Mississippi River. That's What Our Parents Told Us. We Got Sent To Our Rooms For Having Huge Feelings. In My Family, If You Cried Or Got Angry, You Didn't Get Dinner.

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

The Thing About Light Is That It Really Isn’t Yours; It’s What You Gather And Shine Back. And It Gets More Power From Reflectiveness; If You Sit Still And Take It In, It Fills Your Cup, And Then You Can Give It Off Yourself.

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

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

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

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.

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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?

There's A Lovely Hasidic Story Of A Rabbi Who Always Told His People That If They Studied The Torah, It Would Put Scripture On Their Hearts. One Of Them Asked, "why On Our Hearts, And Not In Them?" The Rabbi Answered, "only God Can Put Scripture Inside. But Reading Sacred Text Can Put It On Your Heart, And Then When Your Hearts Break, The Holy Words Will Fall Inside.

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

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.

My Dad Taught Me That To Be A Writer Is A Decision And A Habit. It's Not Anything Lofty, And It Doesn't Have That Much To Do With Inspiration. You Have To Develop The Habit Of Being A Certain Way With Yourself. You Do It At The Debt Of Honor.

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

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Going The Extra Mile

Perfectionism Is The Voice Of The Oppressor; The Enemy Of The People. It Will Keep You Insane Your Whole Life.

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

Perfectionism Means That You Try Not To Leave So Much Mess To Clean Up. But Clutter And Mess Show Us That Life Is Being Lived.

...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.

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

A Whole Lot Of Us Believers, Of All Different Religions, Are Ready To Turn Back The Tide Of Madness By Walking Together, In Both The Dark And The Light - In Other Words, Through Life - Registering Voters As We Go, And Keeping The Faith.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

When We Did Art With The Kids, The Demons Would Lie Down.

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

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

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'help' Is A Prayer That Is Always Answered.

Answered Prayers

Good Therapy Helps. Good Friends Help. Pretending That We Are Doing Better Than We Are Doesn't. Shame Doesn't. Being Heard Does.

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.)

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 Don't Think Anything Is The Opposite Of Love.

When Writers Make Us Shake Our Heads With The Exactness Of Their Prose And Their Truths, And Even Make Us Laugh About Ourselves Or Life, Our Buoyancy Is Restored. We Are Given A Shot At Dancing With, Or At Least Clapping Along With, The Absurdity Of Life, Instead Of Being Squashed By It Over And Over Again.

Absurdity Of Life

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.

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

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

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

Love Is So Much Bigger Than Our Ignorance.

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

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.

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 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

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

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

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.

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.

Laughter Is A Bubbly, Effervescent Form Of Holiness

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.

Certainty Is Missing The Point Entirely.

Sometimes Heaven Is Just A New Pair Of Glasses.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Am Going To Notice The Lights Of The Earth, The Sun And The Moon And The Stars, The Lights Of Our Candles As We March, The Lights With Which Spring Teases Us, The Light That Is Already Present.

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

I'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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Good Writing Is About Telling The Truth.

Telling The Truth

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.

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.

Needless To Say, There Was No One Around Remotely Fitting The Description Of A Normal Person: I Was At A Writing Conference.

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.

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.

Jealousy Has Always Been My Cross, The Weakness And Woundedness In Me That Has Most Often Caused Me To Feel Ugly And Unlovable, Like The Bad Seed.

I Try To Write The Books I Would Love To Come Upon That Are Honest, Concerned With Real Lives, Human Hearts, Spiritual Transformation, Families, Secrets, Wonder, Craziness - And That Can Make Me Laugh.

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

Life And Change

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.

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.

I Did Not Raise My Son, Sam, To Celebrate Mother's Day. I Didn't Want Him To Feel Some Obligation To Buy Me Pricey Lunches Or Flowers, Some Annual Display Of Gratitude That You Have To Grit Your Teeth And Endure.

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.

All Freedom Comes From Discipline.

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.

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.

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.

Write As If Your Parents Are Dead.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Butterflies Were Wind Energy Made Visible.

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

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.

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.

We All Have The Dark, Ignorant Shadow Inside Us. I Have Worked Endlessly To Reveal It And Heal It In Me, But Of Course There's Some Primitive Weird Stuff In Me. The Tea Party Is About Exhorting White Supremacy, Though, So I've Had A Tiny Bit Of Trouble Experiencing Sympathy.

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.

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.)

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

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.

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?

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Left To My Own Devices, My First Inclination Is To Mess In Other People's Lives. I Secretly Believe My Whole Family, And Really The Whole World, Is My Responsibility.

They Believe That If They Do Get Published, A Wonderful New Life Is In Store. It Will Turn Out That Deep Down They Are Really Valuable People And Will Have Lots Of Money From Now On And Really Cool People Like Ethan Hawke Will Be Dropping By All The Time. But It's A Lie. Being A Published Writer Will Make Them Long To Be Only As Mentally Ill As They Are Now. Their Current Level Of Obsession And Doubt And Self-loathing Will Look Like The Good Old Days. Honest.

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

Forgiveness Means It Finally Becomes Unimportant That You Hit Back. You're Done. It Doesn't Necessarily Mean That You Want To Have Lunch With The Person. If You Keep Hitting Back, You Stay Trapped In The Nightmare.

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

Laughter Is Carbonated Holiness.

Many Mornings I Check Out The News As Soon As I Wake Up, Because If It Turns Out That The World Is Coming To An End That Day, I Am Going To Eat The Frosting Off An Entire Carrot Cake; Just For A Start. Then I Will Move Onto Vats Of Clam Dip, Pots Of Crime Brûlée, Nachos, M & M's Etc. Then I Will Max Out Both My Credit Cards.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

A Writer Paradoxically Seeks The Truth And Tells Lies Every Step Of The Way.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Pray Not To Be Such A Whiny, Self-obsessed Baby, And Give Thanks That I Am Not Quite As Bad As I Used To Be (talk About Miracles). Then Something Comes Up, And I Overreact And Blame And Sulk, And It Feels Like I Haven't Made Any Progress At All. But It Turns Out I'm Less Of A Brat Than Before, And I Hit The Reset Button Much Sooner, Shake It Off, And Get My Sense If Humor Back.

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

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.

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

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.

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

What An Incredible Drug Fear Is.

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

I Accidentally Forgot To Graduate From College.

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.

Becoming A Writer Is About Becoming Conscious.

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

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.

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Vinny Guadagnino

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