WIST Quotations

Lamott, Anne -- Bird by Bird (1995)

Dave — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 22:50:17 +0000

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 (b. 1954) American novelist and non-fiction writer
Bird by Bird (1995)

She attributes the quote to "my priest friend Tom"

Lamott, Anne -- Bird by Bird, ch. 5 (1995)

Dave — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 13:57:37 +0000

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

Anne Lamott (b. 1954) American novelist and non-fiction writer
Bird by Bird, ch. 5 (1995)

Lamott, Anne -- Bird by Bird, Introduction (1995)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

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 (b. 1954) American novelist and non-fiction writer
Bird by Bird, Introduction (1995)

Lamott, Anne -- Crooked Little Heart, ch. 4 (1997)

Dave — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 15:46:25 +0000

Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.

Anne Lamott (b. 1954) American novelist and non-fiction writer
Crooked Little Heart, ch. 4 (1997)
(Source)

Lamott, Anne -- Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, “Mom, Interrupted” (2007)

Dave — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 14:44:11 +0000

She floated away on the riptide of dementia, ultimately a speck on the horizon, waving for as long as she could to her deeply confused children onshore.

Anne Lamott (b. 1954) American novelist and non-fiction writer
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, “Mom, Interrupted” (2007)
(Source)

On her mother's Alzheimer's Disease.

Lamott, Anne -- Plan B, ch. 5 “Holy of Holies 101” (2004)

Dave — Thu, 12 May 2022 14:47:43 +0000

Laughter is carbonated holiness.

Anne Lamott (b. 1954) American novelist and non-fiction writer
Plan B, ch. 5 “Holy of Holies 101” (2004)
(Source)

Lamott, Anne -- Traveling Mercies, ch. 3 (1999)

Dave — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 13:20:06 +0000

Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.

Anne Lamott (b. 1954) American novelist and non-fiction writer
Traveling Mercies, ch. 3 (1999)

On Facebook (31 Jan 2013) she further wrote:

When I first got sober in '86, I first heard someone say that harboring resentment is like drinking rat poison, and waiting for the rat to die. Resenting someone is about not forgiving them -- thinking that they have done something to you so damaging or disgusting that the are beyond the pale; so therefore you are choosing to be toxic for the rest of your life, rather than to work and pray for the healing. You are willing to go through life not metabolizing the rat poison, so that this person should know what a morally repellent person you believe them to be. But the most horrible thing is that half the time, they aren't even AWARE of what it is you think they did to you. So it's a complete waste of your precious bile. When I am willing to have clogged bile ducts, because of a person who hardly thinks of me, or has no idea that he behaved like a total asshat, then I'm the crazy one.

Lamott, Anne -- Post (2015-04-08), Facebook

Dave — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 01:52:27 +0000

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

Anne Lamott (b. 1954) American novelist and non-fiction writer
Post (2015-04-08), Facebook
(Source)

Reprinted in her essay (2015-04-10), "Anne Lamott shares all that she knows," Salon.

Collected in Almost Everything, ch. 4 "Unplugged" (2018). (The quote is the full chapter.)