Anne Lamott Quotes

Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.

Telling my children was the toughest part. But that's when you get strong, because you have to be strong for other people.

Before I had children I always wondered whether their births would be, for me, like the ultimate in gym class failures. And I discovered instead... that I'd finally found my sport.

Being a mother is probably the hardest job in the world. I feel like, in a lot of ways, children come into the world to teach us.

A mother has, perhaps, the hardest earthly lot; and yet no mother worthy of the name ever gave herself thoroughly for her child who did not feel that, after all, she reaped what she had sown.

What writing ROOM taught me was that I know exactly how to be the perfect mother, but I'm not willing to do it for more than ten minutes at a time.

When you learn what you can live without, you are able to ask life for the very best because you possess the gift of discernment. You are able to create an authentic life because you are able to make conscious choices.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

By taking to the road, we free ourselves of baggage, both physical and psychological. We walk back to our original condition, to our best selves.

I admire my mother for being a single mum. It's ridiculously hard.

I wanted to dedicate myself completely to the things that matter to me and let everything else go, and I think that's a really rewarding thing.

Having children is my greatest achievement. It was my saviour. It switched my focus from the outside to the inside. My children are gifts, they remind me of what's important.

Single motherhood is an amazing thing; it's a blessing.

I am very strong. When you have children, you have to be.

A lot changed when I had Natasha. I'm a survivor.

I don't put the focus on things that don't matter.

Becoming a mom forced me to re-prioritize and make room for the things that are most important, while recognizing that there are things I can let go of, and the world won't crumble around me.

Most people in business and within their personal lives move towards complexity. More To Dos. More projects. More products. More meetings. More possessions. More goals. The best - I suggest to you - move in the opposite direction.

My children are, without question, the most wonderful thing. I've learnt more about myself through my children than any other experience in my life.

I have found clarity in my head and heart from being a mum.

If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.

Becoming a mother has helped me to realize who I am aside from my career.

A child, thought Carl, is not the only result of childbirth. A mother, too, is born. You see them every day--nondescript women with a bulge just above the groin, slightly double-chinned. Perpetually forty. Someone's mother, you think. There is a child somewhere who has made this woman into a mother, and for the sake of the child she has altered her appearance to better play the part.

The world's beginning is its mother. To have found the mother is also to know the children. Although you know the children, cling to the mother. Until your last day you will not be harmed.

God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness. It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is useful to the point of necessity when they are adolescents.