Anne Lamott Quotes

Sculpture is like farming. If you just keep at it, you can get quite a lot done.

I never feel so alive as when I'm writing and the work is going well.

I stay glued to my piano and my work. I don't look up. I write, I produce, I do the next project, I do my job. I don't look up, and I try to be kind. I try to be kind to people. That's what I do.

Writing is hard work, and fun, and requires you to keep your backside in a chair when you would sometimes like to put it elsewhere. So the only wisdom is the advice to keep at it, I guess.

The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point.

Your musical soul is like facets of a jewel, and you stick out one facet at a time ... (and) I tend to work real hard on whatever it is I do, to get it up to speed, up to a professional level. I tend to bury myself in one thing for years at a time.

Write even when the world is chaotic. You don’t need a cigarette, silence, music, a comfortable chair, or inner peace to write. You just need ten minutes and a writing implement.

I think that very often younger writers don't appreciate how much hard work is involved in writing. The part of writing that's magic is the thinnest rind on the world of creation. Most of a writer's life is just work. It happens to be a kind of work that the writer finds fulfilling in the same way that a watchmaker can happily spend countless hours fiddling over the tiny cogs and bits of wire. ... I think the people who end up being writers are people who don't get bored doing that kind of tight focus in small areas.

To be a writer is to sit down at one's desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone - just plain going at it, in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over...

A journalist also needs to be disciplined, and so do I. I am, essentially, lazy. Without discipline I'd be just a mass of gummy bears on the sofa instead of on book tour with my eighth novel.

The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.

I wish somebody had given me the news that ideas don't just fall on your head like fairy dust. You have to treat that like a job. You have to spend hours each day, where you're just like, 'This is the part of the day when I'm looking for an idea.'

When things aren't working out, we have a tendency to say, 'Go do other things,' but you shouldn't do other things. You need to stay at your desk and continue to try to write. You need to insist on it.

You don't turn out as many books as I did then by sitting around, being cozy with the family.

Any artist that's involved in their work is inevitably going to have a focus in what they do.

Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.

There's nothing romantic about my work... I don't believe in inspiration. I believe that you get to your desk, you stay there, you work, you think of nothing else. You write and you write, and in the end, you write something good.

I knew it would be hard work, but that's the reason you're an actor. If you're a bricklayer, you don't want to just show up at someone's house and put a little row of bricks around their garden. You want to build a building.

When I'm hard at work, when I'm deep in it, there is no other feeling. For me, my work is at all times building a nation out of thin air. It is manning the troops. It is painting a canvas. It is hitting every high note. It is running a marathon. It is being Beyonce. And it is all of those things at the same time.

I'm really happy when I'm actively creating things. When I'm frustrated and not excited, it's because I haven't written anything in a month or so.

Restaurants remind me of bands: there's lots of camaraderie, people work very closely together, very hard, and it's a bad job to pick if you want to make lots of money. Whether music or food, the reward always has to be because you love it.

I just write from dawn to dusk.

I think one of the things that is essential for happiness in life, or at least for non-sadness, is producing something. I guess that's why I spend so much time and agony writing books. But working on carpentry is sort of like all the pleasure with none of the agony.

You have to protect your writing time. You have to protect it to the death.

I think I sit down to the typewriter when it's time to sit down to the typewriter. That isn't to suggest that when I do finally sit down at the typewriter, and write out my plays with a speed that seems to horrify all my detractors and half of my well-wishers, that there's no work involved. It is hard work, and one is doing all the work oneself.