Anne Lamott Quotes

I didn't have any problem bonding with Honey, but I was plagued with insecurities about my ability to bring up my baby.

It used to be that I was always paranoid or a loser or something so there's usually something that you seem to associate yourself with at one time or another.

Perfectionism is really a challenge for me, and it causes me to be super-critical of myself in so many ways: about body image constantly; about parenting; about being a mother.

I'm pretty sure the feeling of inadequacy is universal for moms.

Remember this: No one is looking at your imperfections; they're all too busy worrying about their own.

For plain and fancy worrying, give me a new mother every time.

Rest easy, real mothers. The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one.

Yesterday he told me he thought I would have to pretend to be weak, but he was wrong. I am weak already. I brace myself against the wall and press my forehead to my hands. It’s difficult to take deep breaths, so I take short, shallow ones. I can’t let this happen. They attacked me to make me feel weak. I can pretend they succeeded to protect myself, but I can’t let it become true.

I think I'm most nervous about revealing how nervous I have always been. People think me calm, confident, poised. Inside I'm a jelly.

I’m probably just as good a mother as the next repressed, obsessive-compulsive paranoiac.

I will never understand children. I never pretended to. I meet mothers all the time who make resolutions to themselves. 'I'm going to ... go out of my way to show them I am interested in them and what they do. I am going to understand my children.' These women end up making rag rugs, using blunt scissors.

If you ask any of the other actors, they'd probably say nice things because they're nice people, but I was always like, "Oh gosh, I hope I'm doing this right." I was very hard on myself, and I continue to be. That's why it's sometimes hard for me to digest watching myself on television. There is some pressure.

If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of other young people to anything like the extent to which it used to be hidden in mine - which I consider probable, as I have no particular reason to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity - it is the key to many reservations.

I walked down the hall and saw that [she] was sitting on the floor next to a chair. This is always a bad sign. It's a slippery slope, and it's best just to sit in chairs, to eat when hungry, to sleep and rise and work. But we have all been there. Chairs are for people, and you're not sure if you are one.

But now my problems had been set loose. They could be anywhere at any time and I was just like everyone else I knew: almost positive that there was something profoundly and undiagnosably wrong with me.

I have moments that aren't too bad, but there's always something I'm struggling with, or feeling guilty about. I just figured I needed to try harder, but I find it difficult to sustain that motivation.

Maybe I was just one of those people who couldn't rest easy unless things went catastrophically wrong.

Remember, you can lead a fifty-seven-year-old body to motherhood, but you can't make it stay awake.

I'm currently in the middle of a depression. I couldn't really tell you what set it off, but I think it stems from my cowardice, which confronts me at every turn.

Instruct the mothers of the French people.

And indeed there will be time for the yellow smoke that slides along the street rubbing its back upon the window-panes; there will be time , there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; there will be time to murder and create, and time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate; time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of toast and tea.

Our thoughts are often worse than we are.

ONE OF THE UNSETTLING THINGS about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn’t sure when or where it was going to end.

Sometimes I feel very guilty, so I don't know if I am a clear example of a perfect father, because sometimes I also just punish myself, saying I'm not doing probably the right thing at this particular moment. It's a secret.

I think I prioritize other people's opinions of me very highly, which is not necessarily a good thing - it's a thing that causes a lot of anxiety.