Quotes from Anne Lamott

She quoted the Reverend James Forbes as saying, "Nobody gets into heaven without a letter of reference from the poor.

The search for meaning will fill you with a sense of meaning. Otherwise

We learn from pain that some of the things we thought were castles turn out to be prisons, and we desperately want out, but even though we built them, we can't find the door. Yet maybe if you ask God for help in knowing which direction to face, you'll have a moment of intuition. Maybe you'll see at least one next right step you can take.

We have to make ourselves available to one another, or we can't experience goodness. It's not so much us seeking God, tracking Her down with a butterfly net; it's agreeing to be found. The Old Girl reaches out to everyone and wants to include us in this beautiful, weird, sometimes anguished life. All people: go figure.

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. God tells Job, who wants an explanation for all his troubles, "You wouldn't understand.

The truth is that your spirits don't rise until you get way down.

We have all we need to come through. Against all odds, no matter what we've lost, no matter what messes we've made over time, no matter how dark the night, we offer and are offered kindness, soul, light, and food, which create breath and spaciousness, which create hope, sufficient unto the day.

Will call him a she when the pee-pee is gone. Says Brave is to endure stares, jeers, prejudice. He won't.

Forgiveness and mercy mean that, bit by bit, you begin to outshine the resentment.

We aren't a drop in the ocean, but are the ocean, in drops.

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.

What a paradox: that we connect with God, with divinity, in our flesh and blood and time and space. We connect with God in our humanity. A great truth, attributed to Emily Dickinson, is that "hope inspires the good to reveal itself." This is almost all I ever need to remember. Gravity and sadness yank us down, and hope gives us a nudge to help one another get back up or to sit with the fallen on the ground, in the abyss, in solidarity.