Check out these best Anne Lamott quotes that offer profound wisdom on love, family, hope, and the beauty of the human experience.
Anne Lamott is a best-selling author and speaker known for her insightful writing on spirituality, faith, and personal growth.
Her unique voice combines humor, honesty, and compassion, earning her the nickname “the people’s author.”
Lamott’s writing often delves into themes of alcoholism, motherhood, depression, and religious faith, offering readers raw and relatable reflections on life’s challenges and triumphs.
Her memoirs including Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year (1993) and Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994) have received critical acclaim.
Beyond her memoirs, Lamott’s other popular works, include Traveling Mercies, Grace, Help Thanks Wow, Plan B, and Almost Everything.
Anne Lamott’s books are a guiding light for those seeking hope in the face of adversity. Her words highlight the transformative power of prayer, gratitude, and forgiveness, reminding us that positivity can help us sail through the darkest moments in life.
Below are the most famous Anne Lamott quotes cherished for their authenticity, wisdom, and the comforting humor they bring to life’s ups and downs.
Top 10 Anne Lamott Quotes
- “All freedom comes from discipline.” — Anne Lamott
- “It’s better to be kind than to be right.” — Anne Lamott
- “Pay attention to the beauty surrounding you.” — Anne Lamott
- “Expectations are resentments under construction.” — Anne Lamott
- “It’s good to do uncomfortable things. It’s weight training for life.” — Anne Lamott
- “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” — Anne Lamott
- “A good marriage is where both people feel like they’re getting the better end of the deal.” — Anne Lamott
- “There is nothing as sweet as a comeback, when you are down and out, about to lose, and out of time.” — Anne Lamott
- “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.” — Anne Lamott
- “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor; the enemy of the people. It will keep you insane your whole life.” — Anne Lamott
Best Anne Lamott Quotes
- “Right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe.” — Anne Lamott
- “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.” — Anne Lamott
- “Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.” — Anne Lamott
- “I’m here to be me, which is taking a great deal longer than I had hoped.” — Anne Lamott
- “You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town.” — Anne Lamott
- “We are not here to see through one another, but to see one another through.” — Anne Lamott
- “There are places in your heart you don’t even know exist until you have a child.” — Anne Lamott
- “The truth of my experience is that we are all a lot more alike than we are different.” — Anne Lamott
- “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.” — Anne Lamott
- “The worst part about celebrating another birthday is the shock that you’re only as well as you are.” — Anne Lamott
- “When what we see catches us off guard, and when we write it as realistically and openly as possible, it offers hope.” — Anne Lamott
- “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.” — Anne Lamott
- “Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.” — Anne Lamott
- “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.” — Anne Lamott
- “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” — Anne Lamott
- “I thought the secret of life was obvious: be here now, love as if your whole life depended on it, find your life’s work. and try to get hold of a giant panda.” — Anne Lamott
- “I can never tell what I’m doing when I’m in the middle of publication because I have no confidence. I have terrible self-esteem, along with boundless narcissism.” — Anne Lamott
- “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. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.” — Anne Lamott
- “I also learned that you didn’t come onto this earth as a perfectionist or control freak… You were born as energy, as life, made of the same stuff as stars, blossoms, breezes.” — Anne Lamott
- “The opposite of faith is not doubt: It is certainty. It is madness. You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do.” — Anne Lamott
Famous Quotes By Anne Lamott
- “It’s a great time to be alive.” — Anne Lamott
- “A hundred years from now? All new people.” — Anne Lamott
- “Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting.” — Anne Lamott
- “Never compare your insides to everyone else’s outsides.” — Anne Lamott
- “You can either practice being right or practice being kind.” — Anne Lamott
- “Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back.” — Anne Lamott
- “I believe that discipline and self-love are the total secrets to freedom.” — Anne Lamott
- “The reason I never give up hope is because everything is so basically hopeless.” — Anne Lamott
- “In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” — Anne Lamott
- “Radical self-care is quantum, and radiates out into the atmosphere, like a little fresh air.” — Anne Lamott
- “My best teachers were mess, failure, death, mistakes, and the people I hated, including myself.” — Anne Lamott
- “If you have a problem you can solve by throwing money at it, you don’t have a very interesting problem.” — Anne Lamott
- “Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.” — Anne Lamott
- “The reason ‘help’ is such a great prayer is that God is the gift of desperation. When you’re in despair, you’re teachable.” — Anne Lamott
- “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.” — Anne Lamott
- “Sometimes hope is a radical act, sometimes a quietly merciful response, sometimes a second wind, or just an increased awareness of goodness and beauty.” — Anne Lamott
- “But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on.” — Anne Lamott
- “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.” — Anne Lamott
- “My mind is my main problem almost almost all all the time. I wish I could leave it in the fridge when I go out, but it likes to come with me. I have tried to get it to take up a nice hobby, Tike macrame, but it prefers to think about things, and jot down what annoys it.” — Anne Lamott
- “Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.” — Anne Lamott
Conclusion
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