Anne Lamott

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.”

“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”

“Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past.”

“The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place.”

“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart—your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your own voice.”

“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.”

“No is a complete sentence.”

“The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.”

“Joy is the best makeup.”

“My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.”

“Hope is not a feeling. It is not optimism. It is a choice.”

“Expectations are resentments under construction.”

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.”

“What's the difference between you and God? God never thinks he's you.”

“Grace bats last.”

“One of the things it takes to be a writer is courage.”