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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.

-Anne Lamott

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Write Straight Into The

Anne Lamott

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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.

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More From Anne Lamott

This Is The Easter Message, That Awakening Is Possible, To The Goodness Of God, The Sacredness Of Human Life, The Sisterhood And Brotherhood Of All.

I Wish Grace And Healing Were More Abracadabra Kind Of Things. Also, That Delicate Silver Bells Would Ring To Announce Grace's Arrival. But No, It's Clog And Slog And Scootch, On The Floor, In The Silence, In The Dark.

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.

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

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.

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.'

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

Forgiveness Means It Finally Becomes Unimportant That You Hit Back.

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

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

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.

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.)

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.

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

For Too Long, And Despite What People Told Me, I Had Fallen For What The Culture Said About Beauty, Youth, Features, Heights, Weights, Hair Textures, Upper Arms.

The Truth Is That Progress Is Usually Small And Sneaky.

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.

Certainty Is Missing The Point Entirely.

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

My Father Really Taught Me That You Really Develop The Habit Of Writing And You Sit Down At The Same Time Every Day, You Don't Wait For Inspiration.

You Can Change The World With A Hot Bath, If You Sink Into It From A Place Of Knowing That You Are Worth Profound Care, Even When You're Dirty And Rattled.

I Used To Love To Untangle Chains When I Was A Child. I Had Thin, Busy Fingers, And I Never Gave Up. Perhaps There Was A Psychiatric Component To My Concentration But Like Much Of My Psychic Damage, This Worked To Everyone's Advantage.

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

All I Ever Wanted Since I Arrived Here On Earth Were The Things That Turned Out To Be Within Reach. 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. You Can Change The World With A Hot Bath, If You Sink Into It From A Place Of Knowing That You Are Worth Profound Care, Even When You're Dirty And Rattled. Who Knew?

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

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

What An Incredible Drug Fear Is.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

If You Always Dreamed Of Writing A Novel Or A Memoir, And You Used To Love To Write, And Were Pretty Good At It, Will It Break Your Heart If It Turns Out You Never Got Around To It? If You Wake Up One Day At Eighty, Will You Feel Nonchalant That Something Always Took Precedence Over A Daily Commitment To Discovering Your Creative Spirit? If Not--if This Very Thought Fills You With Regret--then What Are You Waiting For?

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.

She Lived In Fear Of Ifonic Endings.

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.

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

You Are Not Your Bank Account, Or Your Ambitiousness. You're Not The Cold Clay Lump With A Big Belly You Leave Behind When You Die. You're Not Your Collection Of Walking Personality Disorders. You Are Spirit, You Are Love.

Butterflies Were Wind Energy Made Visible.

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

Doubt And Certainty

... 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

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.

There Is Ecstasy In Paying Attention.

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

You Are Going To Have To Give And Give And Give, Or There's No Reason For You To Be Writing. You Have To Give From The Deepest Part Of Yourself, And You Are Going To Have To Go On Giving, And The Giving Is Going To Have To Be Its Own Reward. There Is No Cosmic Importance To Your Getting Something Published, But There Is In Learning To Be A Giver.

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

Creative Expression, Whether That Means Writing, Dancing, Bird-watching, Or Cooking, Can Give A Person Almost Everything That He Or She Has Been Searching For: Enlivenment, Peace, Meaning, And The Incalculable Wealth Of Time Spent Quietly In Beauty.

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.

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

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.

There Are Moments When I Am Writing When I Think That If Other People Knew How I Felt Right Now, They’d Burn Me At The Stake For Feeling So Good, So Full, So Much Intense Pleasure.

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.

These Days Cry Out, As Never Before, For Us To Pay Attention, So We Can Move Through Them And Get Our Joy And Pride Back.

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

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

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.

Most People's Intuitions Are Drowned Out By Folk Sayings. We Have A Moment Of Real Feeling Or Insight, And Then We Come Up With A Folk Saying That Captures The Insight In A Kind Of Wash. The Intuition May Be Real And Ripe, Fresh With Possibilities, But The Folk Saying Is Guaranteed To Be A Cliche, Stale And Self-contained.

I Was Raised In A Family Where None Of Us Ever Raised A Voice, So There Was No Room To Express Feelings Of Rage Or Even Unabashed Joy - A Little Bashed Joy, Here Or There, Or Being Mildly Disgruntled.

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

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

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

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

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

What If We Never 'get Over' Certain Deaths, Or Our Childhoods? What If The Idea That We Should Have By Now, Or Will, Is A Great Palace Lie? What If We're Not Supposed To? What If It Takes A Life Time...?

And That Almost Everyone Was Struggling To Wake Up, To Be Loved, And Not Feel So Afraid All The Time. That's What The Cars, Degrees, Booze, And Drugs Were About.

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.

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.

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.

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

I 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.

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

No One Tells You That Your Life Is Effectively Over When You Have A Child: That You're Never Going To Draw Another Complacent Breath Again... Or That Whatever Level Of Hypochondria And Rage You'd Learned To Repress And Live With Is Going To Seem Like The Good Old Days.

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 Suspect That He Was A Child Who Thought Differently Than His Peers, Who May Have Had Serious Conversations With Grown-ups, Who As A Young Person, Like Me, Accepted Being Alone Quite A Lot. I Think That This Sort Of Person Often Becomes Either A Writer Or A Career Criminal.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Try To Write In A Directly Emotional Way, Instead Of Being Too Subtle Or Oblique. Don't Be Afraid Of Your Material Or Your Past. Be Afraid Of Wasting Any More Time Obsessing About How You Look And How People See You. Be Afraid Of Not Getting Your Writing Done.

Thirty Years Ago My Older Brother, Who Was Ten Years Old At The Time, Was Trying To Get A Report Written On Birds That He'd Had Three Months To Write, Which Was Due The Next Day. We Were Out At Our Family Cabin In Bolinas, And He Was At The Kitchen Table Close To Tears, Surrounded By Binder Paper And Pencils And Unopened Books About Birds, Immobilized By The Hugeness Of The Task Ahead. Then My Father Sat Down Beside Him Put His Arm Around My Brother's Shoulder, And Said, "bird By Bird, Buddy. Just Take It Bird By Bird.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

One Thing I Know For Sure About Raising Children Is That Every Single Day A Kid Needs Discipline.... But Also Every Single Day A Kid Needs A Break.

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?

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

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

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

Think Of A Fine Painter Attempting To Capture An Inner Vision, Beginning With One Corner Of The Canvas, Painting What She Thinks Should Be There, Not Quite Pulling It Off, Covering It Over With White Paint, And Trying Again, Each Time Finding Out What Her Painting Isn't, Until She Finally Finds Out What It Is. And When You Finally Do Find Out What One Corner Of Your Vision Is; You're Off And Running.

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

Write As If Your Parents Are Dead.

Perfectionism Is The Voice Of The Oppressor.

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.

You Get Your Confidence And Intuition Back By Trusting Yourself, By Being Militantly On Your Own Side. ... Don't Look At Your Feet To See If You Are Doing It Right. Just Dance.

Inspirational Life

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

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

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.

I Could Become Like That Dyslexic Agnostic In The Old Joke - The One Who Lies In Bed And Tries To Figure Out If His Dog Exists.

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.

Gratitude Begins In Our Hearts And Then Dovetails Into Behavior. It Almost Always Makes You Willing To Be Of Service, Which Is Where The Joy Resides.

I Devoured Books Like A Person Taking Vitamins, Afraid That Otherwise I Would Remain This Gelatinous Narcissist, With No Possibility Of Ever Becoming Thoughtful, Of Ever Being Taken Seriously.

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

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

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

We Were Raised To Believe In Books, Music, And Nature.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Butterflies And Birds Are Like One Perfect Teaspoon Of Creation.

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.

I Think Joy And Sweetness And Affection Are A Spiritual Path. We're Here To Know God, To Love And Serve God, And To Be Blown Away By The Beauty And Miracle Of Nature. You Just Have To Get Rid Of So Much Baggage To Be Light Enough To Dance, To Sing, To Play. You Don't Have Time To Carry Grudges; You Don't Have Time To Cling To The Need To Be Right.

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

...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.

You Fall So Deeply In Love With Your Grandbaby. It's So So So Much Easier Than Being A Parent, Because You Really Don't Have Much Responsibility. And Just When You Are At The End Of Your Rope With Exhaustion, The Parents Take The Baby Away. So It's The Best Of Both Worlds.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I 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.

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.

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.

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.

Laughter Is The Key That Grace Has Arrived.

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

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

You Try To Sit Down At Approximately The Same Time Every Day. This Is How You Train Your Unconscious To Kick In For You Creatively. ... You Put A Piece Of Paper In The Typewriter, Or You Turn On Your Computer And Bring Up The Right File. ... You Begin Rocking, Just A Little At First, And Then Like A Huge Autistic Child. ... Then Your Mental Illnesses Arrive At The Desk Like Your Sickest, Most Secretive Relatives. And They Pull Up Chairs In A Semicircle Around The Computer, And They Try To Be Quiet But You Know They Are There With Their Weird Coppery Breath, Leering At You Behind Your Back.

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.

...after A Few Days At The Desk, Telling The Truth In An Interesting Way Turns Out To Be As Easy And Pleasurable As Bathing A Cat.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Last Song Was So Deep And Raw And Pure That I Could Not Escape. It Was As If The People Were Singing In Between The Notes, Weeping And Joyful At The Same Time, And I Felt Like Their Voices Or Something Was Rocking Me In Its Bosom, Holding Me Like A Scared Kid, And I Opened Up To That Feeling-and It Washed Over Me.

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

Tidiness Makes Me Think Of Held Breath, Of Suspended Animation.

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

Having A Baby Is Like Suddenly Getting The World's Worst Roommate, Like Having Janis Joplin With A Bad Hangover And Pms Come To Stay With You.

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.

E.l. Doctorow Said Once Said That 'writing A Novel Is Like Driving A Car At Night. You Can See Only As Far As Your Headlights, But You Can Make The Whole Trip That Way.' You Don't Have To See Where You're Going, You Don't Have To See Your Destination Or Everything You Will Pass Along The Way. You Just Have To See Two Or Three Feet Ahead Of You. This Is Right Up There With The Best Advice On Writing, Or Life, I Have Ever Heard.

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.

For Me, Jesus Is My Cleft In The Rock. He Is My Safest Friend, My Safe Totally Loving Accepting Big Brother.

The Women's Movement Burst Forth When I Was Fifteen. That Was When I Began To Believe That Life Might Semi-work Out After All. The Cavalry Had Arrived. Women Were Starting To Say That You Got To Tell The Truth Now, That You Had To Tell The Truth If You Were Going To Heal And Have An Authentic Life.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Am A Terrible And Lazy Christian. I Do Not Believe That The Bible Is The Literal Word Of God. I Just Skip About A Third Of It. I Love The Parts I Love So Much, But I Find A Lot Of It Just Appalling. When A Right-wing Person Quotes A Passage In Order To Attack And Stigmatize Another Person--or Group Of People--i Just Roll My Eyes.

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.

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

Sometimes Heaven Is Just A New Pair Of Glasses.

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.

Everything Was Coming Together By Coming Apart . . . It Is The Most Difficult Zen Practice To Leave People To Their Destiny, Even Though It's Painful - Just Loving Them, And Breathing With Them, And Distracting Them In A Sweet Way, And Laughing With Them . . . If Something Was Not My Problem, I Probably Did Not Have The Solution.

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

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.

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

I Accidentally Forgot To Graduate From College.

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

Good Writing Is About Telling The Truth.

Telling The Truth

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.

You Can Either Practice Being Right Or Practice Being Kind.

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Harold Nicolson

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