Anne Lamott Trying Quotations

I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and help save the world.

Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.

I just try to love and serve everyone, and bring everyone water, and lend an ear; that's what Jesus said to do.

When everything starts going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born.

and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear...

You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. ... You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file. ... You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. ... Then your mental illnesses arrive at the desk like your sickest, most secretive relatives. And they pull up chairs in a semicircle around the computer, and they try to be quiet but you know they are there with their weird coppery breath, leering at you behind your back.

I kept asking God for help, and after a while I realized something -- that Josh was not enjoying this either. He was just trying to take care of himself, and I made the radical decision to let him off the hook.

It was not facing what life dealt that made you crazy, but rather trying to set life straight where it was unstraightenable.

There is nothing more touching to me then a family picture where everyone is trying to look his or her best, but you can see what a mess they all really are.

We're out there somewhere between the known and the unknown, trying to reel in both for a closer look.

Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.

Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper.

Trying to reason with an addict was like trying to blow out a lightbulb.

I thought the secret of life was obvious: be here now, love as if your whole life depended on it, find your life's work, and try to get hold of a giant panda.