Anne Lamott Quotes

I think my mother characters have changed a lot since Sasha was born, just because I understand what a hard job it is now, and I'm coming at it from another angle - like you just love and care about this person so much, and just want to protect them from everything.

It is easy to say that you can adopt the whole human race as your children, but it is not the same as living in a home with a child and shaping all you do to help him learn to be happy and whole and good. Don't live your life without ever holding a child in your arms, on your lap, in your home, and feeling a child's arms around you and hearing his voice in your ear and seeing his smile, given to you because you put it into your heart.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

Having children takes the focus off yourself, which I'm really grateful for. I'm so tired of thinking about myself. I'm sick of myself. You feel you want to be there and not miss out on anything. It's a true joy and a very profound love. You can write a book, you can make a movie, you can paint a painting, but having kids is the most extraordinary thing I've ever taken on.

Time and experience have taught me a priceless lesson: Any child you take for your own becomes your own if you give of yourself to that child. I have born two children and had seven others by adoption, and they are all my children, equally beloved and precious.

I'm nice. I love people. I love kids; I want kids of my own.

A man doesn't have to have all the answers; children will teach him how to parent them, and in the process will teach him everything he needs to know about life.

I have a passion for not only my own kids but just kids in general.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

Being a mom has made me a better person. It's made me more compassionate. It's just awesome. I think I was put here to be a mom.

Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.

Children make you a better everything. Daughters open up a whole different sensibility to you. When you have children, it focuses you on them as opposed to on yourself.

When you have kids, for me, it really changed me. I was always empathetic to other children, but now I'm so much more sensitive to children that aren't my own.

He loved them and cared for them, and you don't kill kids that you love and care for.

I love being a dad, and I'm good at it. Kids teach you about life, like how not to focus on yourself so much.

The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.

The gain is not the having of children; it is the discovery of love and how to be loving.

It's amazing, all of the ways that having kids has changed me. I'm a much less selfish person because of them, and compared to who I was before, my patience level seems infinite.

Motherhood is far better than I expected. I love it with all of my heart.

Having a family, taking care of your kids and people outside yourself, maybe it's motivated me more to give that extra something.

Motherhood made me a better person.

In order to deserve, we must pay our dues and steadily work for perfection. We must relish in struggle, and relinquish pride. We must dispel fear and seek enlightenment. We must shun division and honor love. We must know our hearts and seek to understand others. We must try, live, create, feel, grow and love.

It is our continuing love for our children that makes us want them to become all they can be, and their continuing love for us that helps them accept healthy discipline--from us and eventually from themselves.

The act of loving is an act of self-evolution even when the purpose of the act is someone else's growth.

There's something so remarkable in the intensity of taking care of somebody who can't take care of him or herself. And then watching that little person bloom into adolescence.