Anne Lamott Quotes

One comes, and one goes. Basically, what you leave behind is the record.

A quota is always something artificial that can only last for a certain period of time.

The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.

I can't go to the hardware store, cut a sheet in half and staple it to the window anymore. It doesn't fly.

You can do a lot with Scotch tape. Almost anything! I love that you can hem a dress, and its an instant remedy in a fashion crises.

Fortunate people often have very favorable beginnings and very tragic endings. What matters isn't being applauded when you arrive - for that is common - but being missed when you leave.

No doubt, anarchy, once established, might not last forever. But if your house is on fire, the sensible course of action is to put out the fire, even though this extinguishment provides no guarantee that the house will never catch fire again.

Stamping out fires is a lot of fun, but it is only putting things back the way they were.

True beauty lives on high. Ours is but a flame borrowed thence.

But beneath it all will run that Sicilian understanding that the underside of joy is grief, that the face of sacrifice and suffering is the dark mirror image of pleasure and enjoyment, that every moment of arrival is to be treasured and enjoyed in the full knowledge that it has brought us a moment closer to the moment of departure.

I'm having my platform run up by a movie set designer, so it will be very impressive from the front, but not too premanent. After all, there's no sense putting a lot of time and thought into something you'll have no use for after you're elected.

That’s the funny thing about arriving somewhere, Vin,” he said with a wink. “Once you’re there, the only thing you can really do is leave again.

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

Enjoy the moment, because that is all you have. You never are going to arrive someplace else. You are in a constant state of living in this moment, and that is the only arrival there is. In fact, you will arrive when you stop trying to get someplace else.

Kneecaps only exist to get hit with claw-hammers; grace only exists to be fallen from.

You want to put a band-aid on something that needs stitches.

The world, Govinda my friend, is not imperfect, not to be seen as on a slow path toward perfection: No, it is perfect in every moment, all transgression already bears grace within itself, all little children already have the aged in themselves, all the sucklings death, all the dying eternal life.

The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people — eternal life.

But then, that was the problem with pretty toy stitches. When real life got hold of them, they always tore out.

But it was like wearing a size five sneakers when your foot is a seven- you can get by for a few steps, and then you set down and pull off the shoes because it just plain much

It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.

Love is a mistake when we're all going to die any day now.

The little boy nodded at the peony and the peony seemed to nod back. The little boy was neat, clean and pretty. The peony was unchaste, dishevelled as peonies must be, and at the height of its beauty.(...) Every hour is filled with such moments, big with significance for someone.