Anne Lamott Quotes

I don't believe in pretending to be someone else. I'm what I actually am in real life. For instance, like any normal girl, I fight with my mother. I mean, it is just fine. In fact, I fight daily with my mother.

Don't try to write anything you can't feel - it will be a failure - 'echoes nothing worth

If I'm happy, I look happy; if I'm angry, I show it. Without worrying about how others may react.

It is now only in letters I write what I feel: not in literature any more, and I seldom say it, because I keep trying to be amusing.

She looks sad. She looks angry. She looks different from everyone else I know—she cannot put on that happy face others wear when they know they are being watched. She doesn’t put on a face for me, which makes me trust her somehow.

I try to be genuine. I try to be real. It's such a subjective thing, but I try to convey an emotion.

I'm in no position to try to tell people how to live their family life.

Oh, for Christ's sake,' I hear. 'Can we please just try to have a good time?' This is like ordering someone to find you attractive, and it doesn't work. I've tried it.

If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?

Pay close attention to when you're being the real you & when you're trying to impress an invisible jury.

And that is all anyone can do, try to be honest about what he feels, what he's seen or thinks he's seen.

We're all real people with moments of intense honesty and pathos and humanity. We all experience that, whether you're comedic or not.

I realized that if you're trying to reach an audience, being as subjective as possible and really trying to write from something genuine is the way to go. Really it's mostly from my own process, my own experience.

My mother phones daily to ask, "Did you just try to reach me?" When I reply no, she adds, "So, if you're not too busy, call me while I'm still alive," . . . and hangs up.

Weirdly enough, I don't like to pretend. I try to use things in me, and translate them into the situation and the characters, so it always needs to run through my own veins.

Even if the role is very far away from me, to try and make it as nakedly me as possible is an intriguing notion.

Fool," said my muse to me. "Look in thy heart and write.

If you never look just wrong to your contemporaries you will never look just right to posterity - every writer has to try to be, to some extent, sometimes, a law unto himself.

Women always try to tame themselves as they get older, but the ones who look best are often a bit wilder.

I try to paint what I have found and not what I look for. In art, intentions are of little importance.

I just try to be true to myself and look the way that I'm comfortable looking. Because if I'm comfortable with me, then you're going to be comfortable with me as well.

As I look back, I understand what [the record company] was getting at. They were trying to market a record and make it as commercially acceptable as possible. It hurt me and my credibility with critics.

There is so much crap in the world, both in show and other businesses, that I try to be vulnerable myself, in the hopes that there is some truth I can get to, that makes people feel less alone in the world.

I can't expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself.

I've got an uncle myself. Nobody should be held responsible for their uncles. Nature's little throwbacks - that's how I look at it.