Anne Lamott Quotes

What I really hated, of course, was my mind. There must have been an off switch somewhere, but I was damned if I could find it.

Not treasured wealth, nor the consul's lictor, can dispel the mind's bitter conflicts and the cares that flit, like bats, about your fretted roofs.

Look at it this way: There are many here among us for whom the life force is best represented by the livid twitching of one tortured nerve, or even a full-scale anxiety attack. I do not subscribe to this point of view 100 percent, but I understand it, have lived it. Thus the shriek, the caterwaul, the chainsaw gnarlgnashing, the yowl and the whizz that decapitates may be reheard by the adventurous or emotionally damaged as mellifluous bursts of unarguable affirmation.

My soul is dark with stormy riot: directly traced over to diet.

I'm very emotional; I think I may go mad in several years' time.

The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamours and interferes with the music I hear in my head.

I hit my head against the wall because I don't want to know all the terrible things that I know about. I don't want to feel all these wretched things, but they're in me already. If I don't get rid of them, I'm not ever going to feel anything else.

Fear and Guilt are the only enemies of man.

Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation.

How sick i am! that thought Always comes to me with horror. Is it this strange for everybody? But such fugitive feelings have always been my metier.

I'm dreading the time that is not near As a man on a cross I have no fear I can't believe these words I'm saying You've got to feel your lines

She sometimes thought she was going crazy. Her first thought when she woke up was always how to get him out of her thoughts. And she would keep watch, hoping to see him next door, while plotting ways to never have to see him again.

When you live with voices in your head, you are drawn inextricably to voices outside your head. Very often the voices work to confirm your worst suspicions. Or think of things you could never have imagined! There are only so many hours of the day to hate yourself.

Stress is caused by being here but wanting to be there, or being in the present but wanting to be in the future. It's a split that tears you apart inside.

There's nothing wrong with me...except acute chronic fear.

I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.

Worry is fear in disguise. And fear will eat you from the inside out if you let it.

Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,Reality's dark dream!I turn from you, and listen to the wind,Which long has raved unnoticed.

You can’t keep messing me around like this. It’s been going on too long. I can’t take it anymore. I get sick every time you come around. Then I get sick when you leave. You’re like a disease to me.

my brain had begun to endure its familiar siege: panic and dislocation, and a sense that my thought processes were being engulfed by a toxic and unnameable tide that obliterated any enjoyable response to the living world.

Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.

I have my own demons and dark moods. It's weird.

I never will have peace of mind. I'm not constructed that way. Some things in life can be horrible.

I was an emotional basket case.

Of course there are times when I think, 'I'd be better out of this.'