Anne Lamott Quotes

The act of writing is a way of tricking yourself into revealing something that you would never consciously put into the world. Sometimes I'm shocked by the deeply personal things I've put into books without realizing it.

In the writing, I'm just trying to go deeper, emotionally, and learn more about myself and reveal more and find a way to connect with people in new ways.

The diary will really try and tell people who you are and what you were. The alternative is writing nothing, or creating a totally lifeless, as it is leafless, garden.

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

Writing is not lying, nor is it theft. It is a journey and search for transparency between one’s words and one’s soul.

I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away.

I write to explore something that fascinates me, and I write the way I do because it is the only way I know how to write.

When I began writing, I didn't read any other children's poets... I didn't want to be influenced until I'd found my own voice. Now I read them all.

France was very opposite of the show-business experience I'd been living; I was anonymous and alone. I wore no makeup, wore the same clothes every day. And I wrote and wrote and wrote.

And eventually as I kept writing it, something emerged that was not quite me but a version of me.

Everything on this record is what I really wanted to say, and I'm back to being the poet I always thought I was.

At the typewriter you find out who you are.

I have a lot of written material, and all of it's different. Some records that I have are country, some pop, some alternative rock. I just write what I feel, so I can't specifically say. I just want to be an artist of truth and an artist that stays true to herself.

The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.

I write poems to find out why I write them

You still had to find the music inside your language. You know, it was - that's a big part of what sort of moved me to begin writing the book. I wrote a little essay and I felt, yeah, this is a good voice. This is a good feeling. It feels like me.

I'd advise all you songwriters out there, if you're getting into it for the business, go home and get a job digging ditches or something. Get a life. You'll learn a lot more, and you won't write a lot of rotten poetry.

The positive thing about writing is that you connect with yourself in the deepest way. You get a chance to know who you are, to know what you think. You begin to have a relationship with your mind.

I think to the degree writers are serious, there is a greater tendency for them to write to themselves, because they're trying to compose their own thoughts. They are trying to find out what is in their minds, which is the great mystery. Finding out who you are, what is in your head, and what kind of companion you are to yourself in the course of life. I do think people have very profound lives of which they say virtually nothing.

I write to discover what I think.

But I never want to get to the point where I write a safe song or one that represents my sense of a subject in order to appear civilized.

When you start putting pen to paper, you see a side of your personal truth that doesn't otherwise reveal itself in conversation or thought.

I've heard Stephen King say that when you write a novel you end up revealing everything about yourself.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.