Top 500 Anne Lamott Quotes (2024 Update)

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

— Anne Lamott

2. “All freedom comes from discipline.”

— Anne Lamott

Featured in: Discipline Quotes

3. “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

Featured in: Quotes About Hope

4. “It’s better to be kind than to be right.”

— Anne Lamott

5. “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

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

— Anne Lamott

7. “Hope begins in the dark.”

— Anne Lamott

8. “A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal.”

— Anne Lamott

Featured in: Marriage Quotes

9. “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

10. “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor; the enemy of the people. It will keep you insane your whole life.”

— Anne Lamott

11. “Expectations are resentments under construction.”

— Anne Lamott

12. “Right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe.”

— Anne Lamott

13. “Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.”

— Anne Lamott

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

— Anne Lamott

Featured in: Commitment Quotes

15. “The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.”

— Anne Lamott

16. “We are not here to see through one another, but to see one another through.”

— Anne Lamott

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

— Anne Lamott

Featured in: Reading Quotes

18. “I’m here to be me, which is taking a great deal longer than I had hoped.”

— Anne Lamott

19. “It’s good to do uncomfortable things. It’s weight training for life.”

— Anne Lamott

20. “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”

— Anne Lamott

21. “You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town.”

— Anne Lamott

22. “The truth of my experience is that we are all a lot more alike than we are different.”

— Anne Lamott

23. “Radical self-care is quantum, and radiates out into the atmosphere, like a little fresh air.”

— Anne Lamott

24. “Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back.”

— Anne Lamott

Featured in: Forgiveness Quotes

25. “In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.”

— Anne Lamott

26. “I was reminded of the Four Immutable Laws of the Spirit: Whoever is present are the right people. Whenever it begins is the right time. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened. And when it’s over, it’s over.”

— Anne Lamott

27. “It’s a great time to be alive.”

— Anne Lamott

28. “Never compare your insides to everyone else’s outsides.”

— Anne Lamott

29. “I believe that discipline and self-love are the total secrets to freedom.”

— Anne Lamott

30. “Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”

— Anne Lamott

Featured in: Reading Quotes

31. “My best teachers were mess, failure, death, mistakes, and the people I hated, including myself.”

— Anne Lamott

32. “A hundred years from now? All new people.”

— Anne Lamott

33. “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

34. “I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kind of things. Also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace’s arrival. But no, it’s clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in the silence, in the dark.”

— Anne Lamott

35. “Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.”

— Anne Lamott

36. “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

37. “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

38. “Radical self-care is what we’ve been longing for, desperate for, our entire lives-friendship with our own hearts.”

— Anne Lamott

39. “I love silence. I seek and create it at every opportunity. I need it to work.”

— Anne Lamott

40. “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.”

— Anne Lamott

41. “Pay attention to the beauty surrounding you.”

— Anne Lamott

42. “You can either practice being right or practice being kind.”

— Anne Lamott

43. “Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting.”

— Anne Lamott

44. “The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines.”

— Anne Lamott

45. “I can tell you that what you’re looking for is already inside you.”

— Anne Lamott

46. “When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.”

— Anne Lamott

47. “Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.”

— Anne Lamott

48. “You don’t always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.”

— Anne Lamott

49. “If you have a problem you can solve by throwing money at it, you don’t have a very interesting problem.”

— Anne Lamott

50. “Dogs are the closest we come to knowing the divine love of God on this side of eternity.”

— Anne Lamott