Anne Lamott Quotes

I have never in my life walked with a harness. The weight of the tether, makes it feel like I'm dragging an anchor behind me.

Wings are freedom only when they are wide open in flight. On one's back they are a heavy weight.

In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains.

Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.

The more gunk I have on my face, the less free I feel.

The weight of the world on my shoulders was something that I had to let go.

When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of heaviness. We say that something has become a great burden to us. We either bear the burden or fail and go down with it, we struggle with it, win or lose. And Sabina - what had come over her? Nothing. She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden, but the unbearable lightness of being.

It was heavy, and I staggered when I lifted it; but it was strangely satifying to have a real burden upon my shoulders – a kind of counterweight to my terrible heaviness of heart.

Church always seemed the same. Jess could tune it out the same way he tuned out school, with his body standing up and sitting down in unison with the rest of the congregation but his mind numb and floating, not really thinking or dreaming but at least free.

It's easy to be heavy; hard to be light.

In conclusion, the arms of others either fall from your back, or they weigh you down, or they bind you fast.

I know now: I do not hope for anything. I do not fear anything, I have freed myself from both the mind and the heart, I have mounted much higher, I am free .

Here is my secret: I don't mind what happens.

While I'm writing, I'm far away; and when I come back, I've gone.

As long as the mind clings to belief, it is held in a prison.

The farther we get away from the land, the greater our insecurity.

To manage your mind, know that there is nothing, and then relinquish all attachment to nothingness.

Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing.

Break your pitcher against a rock. We don't need any longer to haul pieces of the ocean around.

You wear your honor like a suit of armor... You think it keeps you safe, but all it does is weigh you down and make it hard for you to move.

I'm tired of carrying around the weight of the world. I'm just going to lay it down now. It's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up.

The following doodle: a girl with pigtails is bent under the weight of a gigantic boulder. Her cheeks puff out, and her rounded lips expel steam. One widening steam cloud contains the word Pressure, darkly retraced.

Have the daring to stop doing the things you really don't want to do. Can you see them? Look closely. Can you observe the many things you do because you reluctantly feel you should or must? Watch closely. Examine every action and reaction. Do you act naturally or do you act because you feel compelled? If you feel compelled, stop. Compulsion is slavery. Example: Refuse to go along with the crowd.

I'm afraid you will have to fly holding the rock with its heavy chain.

To be relieved of love, she thought, was to give up a terrible burden.