Anne Lamott · 251 pages
Rating: (20.7K votes)
“And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“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.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“So how on earth can I bring a child into the world, knowing that such sorrow lies ahead, that it is such a large part of what it means to be human?
I'm not sure. That's my answer: I'm not sure.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“one thing about having a baby is that each step of the way you simply cannot imagine loving him any more than you already do, because you are bursting with love, loving as much as you are humanly capable of- and then you do, you love him even more.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“I think we're all pretty crazy on this bus. I'm not sure I know anyone who's got all the dots on his or her dice.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“I’m probably just as good a mother as the next repressed, obsessive-compulsive paranoiac.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“...one of the worst things about being a parent, for me, is the self-discovery, the being face to face with one's secret insanity and brokenness and rage.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“I guess he'll have to figure out someday that he is supposed to have this dark side, that it is part of what it means to be human, to have the darkness just as much as the light- that in fact the dark parts make the light visible; without them, the light would disappear. But I guess he has to figure other stuff out first, like how to keep his neck from flopping all over the place and how to sit up.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“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.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“I cry intermittently, like a summer rain. I don't feel racked by the crying; in fact, it hydrates me. Then rage wells up in me, and I want to take a crowbar to all the cars in the neighborhood.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“I have these secret pangs of shame about being single, like I wasn't good enough to get a husband. Rita reminded me of something I'd told her once, about the five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston. The first rule, he says, is that you must not have anything wrong with you or anything different. The second one is that if you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible. The third rule is that if you can't get over it, you must pretend that you have. The fourth rule is that if you can't even pretend that you have, you shouldn't show up. You should stay home, because it's hard for everyone else to have you around. And the fifth rule is that if you are going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to feel ashamed.
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.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“Oh, but my stomach, she is like a waterbed covered in flannel. When I lie on my side in bed, my stomach lies politely beside me, like a puppy.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“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.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“Peg came over with dinner tonight and told me about this dumb schmaltzy poem she heard someone read at an AA meeting. It got me thinking. It was about how while we are on earth, our limitations are such that we can only see the underside of the tapestry that God is weaving. God sees the topside, the whole evolving portrait and its amazing beauty, and uses us as the pieces of thread to weave the picture. We see the glorious colors and shadings, but we also see the knots and the threads hanging down, the think lumpy patches, the tangles. But God and the people in heaven with him see how beautiful the portraits in the tapestry are. The poem says in this flowery way that faith is about the willingness to be used by God wherever and however he most needs you, most needs the piece of thread that is your life. You give him your life to put through his needle, to use as he sees fit.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“I heard an old man speak once, someone who had been sober for fifty years, a very prominent doctor. He said that he’d finally figured out a few years ago that his profound sense of control, in the world and over his life, is another addiction and a total illusion. He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the back seat of cars, in those car seats that have steering wheels, with grim expressions of concentration on their faces, clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car to do whatever it is doing, he thinks of himself and his relationship with God: God who drives along silently, gently amused, in the real driver's seat.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“When Sam’s having a hard time and being a total baby about the whole thing, I feel so much frustration and rage and self-doubt and worry that it’s like a mini-breakdown. I feel like my mind becomes a lake full of ugly fish and big clumps of algae and coral, of feelings and unhappy memories and rehearsals for future difficulties and failures. I paddle around in it like some crazy old dog, and then I remember that there’s a float in the middle of the lake and I can swim out to it and lie down in the sun. That float is about being loved, by my friends and by God and even sort of by me. And so I lie there and get warm and dry off, and I guess I get bored or else it is human nature because after a while I jump back into the lake, into all that crap. I guess the solution is just to keep trying to get back to the float. This morning Sam woke at 4:00, so”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the backseat of cars, in those car seats that have steering wheels, with grim expressions of concentration on their faces, clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car to do whatever it is doing, he thinks of himself and his relationship with God: God who drives along silently, gently amused, in the real driver’s seat.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“They ask that we pray for their families, and for kinder leaders, and for the homeless, and people with AIDS, and people in other countries in crises of starvation or war.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“he gets this glinty Donald Trump look in his eyes, like in the old cartoons where someone gets a greedy brainstorm, blinks, and we hear the sound of a cash register and see the dollar signs in his eyes.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“So how on earth can I bring a child into the world, knowing that such sorrow lies ahead, that it is such a large part of what it means to be human?”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
Anne Lamott
Born place: in San Francisco, California, The United States
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“Teeth retracting, Lissianna pulled free of Greg Hewitt’s neck and glanced guiltily over her shoulder. The sight of Thomas and her mother staring at her wide-eyed from the doorway was enough to make her stand quickly, her hands moving to straighten her clothes and hair.
“I cannot believe this!” Marguerite stomped into the room. “Sneaking around and unwrapping your gifts before your birthday like you’re twelve instead of two hundred! What were you thinking?”
“Well, technically, it is her birthday, Aunt Marguerite,” Thomas pointed out as he closed the door.
Lissianna tossed her cousin a grateful smile, but said, “I wasn’t sneaking around. I came up to get fresh stockings.” She scooped them up off the bed, and added, “And I didn’t unwrap him.”
Marguerite stared pointedly at the floor.
After glancing down to see the untied bow lying forgotten there, Lissianna grimaced, and admitted, “Okay, I did unwrap him, but only because he was upset, and I hated to leave him distressed.” She paused, then tilted her head, and said, “I take it Bastien’s arrival interrupted you before you could put the full whammy on him? He was upset about being kidnapped and wanted to be untied when I got here.”
“I didn’t kidnap him,” Marguerite said with affront, then peered past Lissianna to Dr. Gregory Hewitt to say, “I didn’t kidnap you. I borrowed you.”
-Marguerite, Thomas, & Lissianna”
― Lynsay Sands, quote from A Quick Bite
“It's like this," he'd explained once to Connie. "If someone gave you a single rose, you'd be happy, right?"
"Okay," he went on, "Now imagine someone gives you ten thousand roses."
"That is a whole lotta roses," she said. "That's too much."
"Right. Too much. But more than that, it makes each individual rose much less special, right? It makes it hard to pick one out and say, 'That's the good one.' And it makes you want to just get rid of them all because none of them seem special now."
Connie had narrowed her eyes. "Are you saying when you're at school you just want to get rid of everyone?”
― Barry Lyga, quote from I Hunt Killers
“هنا في هذا الجسد كان يوجد - ذات مرة - رجل.”
― Paulo Coelho, quote from The Fifth Mountain
“Tell the truth, Giovanni Vecchio." A mischievous look came to her eye. "You have a butler, a cool car, and I've only ever seen you at night..."
He froze, tension suddenly evident in the set of his shoulders. Beatrice leaned closer and whispered, "You're Batman, aren't you?”
― Elizabeth Hunter, quote from A Hidden Fire
“What am I supposed to do about you?”
― Tom Clancy, quote from Without Remorse
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