Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.
Laughter is carbonated holiness.
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.
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.
You can live a life of consequence and love and joy and be present in your life or you can live a life that looks like you still have something to prove.
Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.
Almost everything will work if you unplug it for a few minutes…including you.
My mind is constantly prowling around on all fours, sniffing out self-doubt and insecurity.
It’s okay to be a mess. It means you’re trying and learning and growing.
The majority of the voices in your head are not you. They’re society’s idea of you, advertising’s idea of you, your mom’s idea of you – but none of those voices speak the truth.
What if you woke up today with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?
Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting.
Anne Lamott Quotes part 2
You loved her so deeply. But she loved you deeper, for she loved the person you really were and not the mask you put on for others.
Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case.
You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.
Expectations are resentments under construction.
We all have something to teach each other, and the world is a better place when we share our stories.
Being thoughtful about our own shame and the shame of others allows us to soften, to stay open when our natural reflex would be to shut down and hide.
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.
Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued.
We are all just walking each other home.
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
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.
You can’t take anything people say personally, because they are just living in their own stories.
Never compare your insides to someone else’s outsides.
Don’t look at your feet to see if you’re doing it right. Just dance.
It’s good to do uncomfortable things. It’s weight training for life.
You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards.
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.
You can do anything for ten minutes.
Here are the two best prayers I know: ‘Help me, help me, help me’ and ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’
Joy is a revolutionary act.
What is important is that you make the leap. Jump high and hard with intention and heart.
There were entire books written on the various meanings of various things.
Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
Time is not something you save. It’s something you spend.
The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind.
I think I need some sort of punctuation advice, but I don’t get any, nor do I ask. And I realize this moment that I’ve learned to live in the white spaces, throughout the unfinished sentences.
We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously this thing called life.
Hope is not about proving anything. It’s about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us.
I am going to privately contact some of the people who sit with each other in the church basement, and I am going to ask their feedback on how I might improve as a human being.
Forgiveness is not about forgetting. It is about letting go of another person’s throat.
Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.
You can’t get to any place worth going to without running the gauntlet of rejection, hardship, failure.
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