Anne Lamott Quotes

Discipline is the servant of inspiration.

All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently, to deserve them.

Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows up

Art doesn't spring from the muses alone, but from hard work.

There's no secret, but inspiration has to find you working. And that's one of the key things that I've always remembered. And if I put my mind to it tonight, I think I could take a guitar, and by 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, something will have happened - I'll have had something to hang onto. But I think that's the key.

My secret? A desire to work, years of dedication and loving what you do; I can't live without music.

Acting and the industry of making movies is beautiful, but it's so exhausting and such hard work; if you don't absolutely 100% want to do something, it defeats the purpose.

At Pixar, 'Wall-E' was our ninth film, and they've all been successes - more than that, they've all really touched people. Everybody wonders, 'How do you do it?' Well, how do you not do it? You just work hard.

My three Ps: passion, patience, perseverance. You have to do this if you've got to be a filmmaker.

I'm always trying. Between every book, I think, 'Well now, it's time to get down to the serious stuff.'

When I'm in the studio, I stay in the studio, like, sometimes 20 hours out the day.

Songwriting is a burst of inspiration and then a long bit of work and a tremendous bit of desperation.

All great artists and thinkers are great workers.

Here's the truth about telling stories with your life. It's going to sound like a great idea, and you're going to get excited about it, and then when it comes time to do the work, you're not going to want to do it. It's like that with writing books, and it's like that with life. People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.

If you can quit, then quit. If you can't quit, you're a writer.

I feel such a creative force in me: I am convinced that there will be a time when, let us say, I will make something good every day , on a regular basis....I am doing my very best to make every effort because I am longing so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things mean painstaking work, disappointment, and perseverance.

Writing is grunt work - you need to have self-motivation, perseverance, and faith... talent is the smallest part of it.

One day work is hard, and another day it is easy; but if I had waited for inspiration I am afraid I should have done nothing. The miner does not sit at the top of the shaft waiting for the coal to come bubbling up to the surface. One must go deep down, and work out every vein carefully.

Even after you've won fame and fortune, every time you write you've got to write, there's no shortcut, you have to start your career all over again.

Writing is mainly perspiration, not inspiration.

Without the work, the magic won’t come.

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

Keep showing up for your side of the job and give genius a chance to do its part.

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.