Anne Lamott Quotes

I walked away a little disheartened, thinking, 'Oh well. I came a long way to meet the Wizard of Oz, but I guess I won't. Such is life.

I read Aschenbach's constant desire to go beyond the works he has already produced to be the counterpart of Mann's deep wish to surpass his previous fiction; sometimes the diaries express this in terms of a dejected judgment that the summit has already been reached.

It's always bitterly disappointing to people to see how normally one can live.

I'm disappointed that success hasn't been a Himalayan feeling.

If you're alive for more than five minutes, you're going to be disappointed.

I thought 'The Well' was going to launch my career, but nothing happened.

I've several times had jobs that I thought were going to be my big break, and it didn't pan out.

I don't think any of us grew up into the world we were hoping for or expecting.

When you see somebody who's got a complaining personality, it usually means that they had some vision of what things could be, and they're constantly disappointed by that. I think that would be the camp that I would fall into - constantly horrified by the things people do.

It's too heart-wrenching doing the solo thing. I throw myself into it and get so excited, and then 2000 people buy it and you're, like, 'Oh. I guess it's not that good after all.'

Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown.

I was going to be a jazz-fusion guitarist. I came to London at one point with my mate, and we were going to make it. We spent three days there and went back home to our mummies.

When I joined the film industry I looked forward to different roles, unfortunately that did not materialise.

I had this fantasy vision of what a career as a musician was like. And then I grew up and actually got in the business and realized, it doesn't often work that way.

It doesn't take a whole long life to realize that what we deserve to have, we rarely get.

I liked reading and working out my ideas in the midst of that endless crowd walking in and out of the (library) looking for something. I, too, was seeking fame and fortune by sitting at the end of a long golden table next to the sets of American authors on the open shelves.

You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid

If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you're not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.

But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as high as we were, it's a very long fall, and we hit the ground with a thud.

Well I thought my pickin' would set them on fire, but nobody wanted to hire a guitar man.

And if there is anybody out there who is crazy enough to want to become a writer, I'd say go ahead, spit in the eye of the sun, hit those keys, it's the best madness going, the centuries need help, the species cry for light and gamble and laughter. Give it to them. There are enough words for all of us.

When your mother is made out of your dreams, anything real is bound to disappoint you.

If you want to be a writer, all you need is a piece of paper and a pencil, and I had a manual typewriter. It doesn't cost money to write. It costs money to make art. So I would just write. I would hand out stories in the classes in high school. And the teacher would say, "Whatever you do, don't become a writer."

Not uncommonly one hears some romantic young woman say, 'Oh, I would give anything to be a writer.' But she would not; and 'anything' is not enough. One must give everything.

Are not poets men who fulfill their hopes prematurely?