Anne Lamott · 275 pages
Rating: (38.8K votes)
“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said 'do the best you can with these, they will have to do'. And mostly, against all odds, they do.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“It turned out this man worked for the Dalai Lama. And she said gently-that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born-and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“...because when people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“It is unearned love--the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It's the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“...most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of the people around you.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it...I would discover that it hadn't washed me away.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“...music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“The thing about light is that it really isn’t yours; it’s what you gather and shine back. And it gets more power from reflectiveness; if you sit still and take it in, it fills your cup, and then you can give it off yourself.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“It's so awful, attacking your child. It's the worse thing I know, to shout loudly at this 50 lb. being with his huge trusting brown eyes. It's like bitch-slapping E.T.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“[Her] work taught me that you could be all the traditional feminine things -- a mother, a lover, a listener, a nurturer -- and you could also be critically astute and radical and have a minority opinion that was profoundly moral.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“Who was it who said that forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past?”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“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. I don’t know why it’s not more like it is in the movies, why things don’t come out neatly and lessons can’t be learned when you’re in the mood for learning them, why love and grace often come in such motley packaging.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“I smiled back at her. I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“I think that is why we stay close to our families, no matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or dull- because when people have seen you at your worst, you don’t have to put on the mask as much.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“There is nothing more touching to me then a family picture where everyone is trying to look his or her best, but you can see what a mess they all really are.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“When you make friends with fear, it can’t rule you.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“And my fear of failure has been lifelong and deep. If you are what you do- and I think my parents may have accidentally given me this idea- and you do poorly, what then? It’s over; you’re wiped out. All those prophecies you heard in the dark have come true, and people can see the real you, see what a schmendrick you are, what a fraud.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“Now she and I sit together in her room and eat chocolate, and I tell her that in a very long time when we both to go heaven, we should try to get chairs next to each other, close to the dessert table.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“Without using the word, everyone started forgiving each other again. Just like that, from the no of all nothingness: you have a big tense mess and out of it comes some joy. It must be magic.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“I know that sometimes these friends feel that they have been expelled from the ordinary world they lived in before and that they are now citizens of the Land of the Fucked.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“For twenty years I have ached to go back home, when there was nobody there to whom I could return.”
― Anne Lamott, quote from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Anne Lamott
Born place: in San Francisco, California, The United States
See more on GoodReads
“This is about me. And how I will never get to be one of those girls, no matter how much I hope and pray and want it.”
― Abby McDonald, quote from Getting Over Garrett Delaney
“... if Charles is undone, he'll find half his acquaintance ruined too, and that, you know, is a consolation.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, quote from The School for Scandal
“Even when you're down, there is still hope. No matter how bad things get and no matter how small a hope there is, anything is better than nothing, No matter how bad things get, they can always, ALWAYS get worse. Take my word on that.”
― Christina Engela, quote from Demonspawn
“Had sin never entered the world it still would be fitting for us to fear God—to bow in reverential awe before Him. We would gladly join the seraphs in calling out, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” But sin did enter the world—and because of His holiness, God now reveals Himself as the hater of sin and the just punisher of sinners. But He also reveals Himself in the person of His Son as a merciful and gracious Savior. Our awe of His holiness can be joined with amazement at His love. Reflect on these words from John”
― Jerry Bridges, quote from The Joy of Fearing God
“Pollution were the rainbow-coloured oil slicks that spread upon the ocean's salty surface, the curling tendrils of smoke spiralling upwards into gray skies, the funeral pyres of rainforests, the sting of acid in the spring rain. Nonetheless, there was something about them that seemed so innocent and kind and friendly, despite the sites they guarded. Mandy often wondered why that was. Pollution looked like living weapons, with their sharp fingernails, powerful abilities and canine-like teeth, yet they had the most beautiful eyes and polite personalities.”
― Rebecca McNutt, quote from Mandy and Alecto: The Collected Smog City Book Series
A Study in Scarlet
The Iron Daughter
Magician
The Valley of Horses
Swan Song
A Town Like AliceBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
