#ld

My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words; about the margins, where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found. In a library, you could find miracles and truth and you might find something that would make you laugh so hard that you get shushed, in the friendliest way. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#along #between #could #find #found

Nothing heals us like letting people know our scariest parts: When people listen to you cry and lament, and look at you with love, it's like they are holding the baby of you. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#cry #heals #holding #know #lament

I used to love to untangle chains when I was a child. I had thin, busy fingers, and I never gave up. Perhaps there was a psychiatric component to my concentration but like much of my psychic damage, this worked to everyone's advantage. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#busy #chains #child #component #concentration

We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#inflict #life #must #resented #society

Being on a book tour is like being on the seesaw when you're a little kid. The excitement is in having someone to play with, and in rising up in the air, but then you're at the mercy of those holding you down, and if it's your older brother, or Paul Wolfowitz, they leap up, so that you crash down and get hurt. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#being #book #book tour #brother #crash

I didn't write about my mother much in the third year after she died. I was still trying to get my argument straight: When her friends or our relatives wondered why I was still so hard on her, I could really lay out the case for what it had been like to be raised by someone who had loathed herself, her husband, even her own name. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#after #argument #been #case #could

I got a lot of things that society had promised would make me whole and fulfilled - all the things that the culture tells you from preschool on will quiet the throbbing anxiety inside you - stature, the respect of colleagues, maybe even a kind of low-grade fame. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#colleagues #culture #even #fame #fulfilled

I see that children fill the existential hollowness many people feel; that when we have children, we know they will need us, and maybe love us, but we don't have a clue how hard it is going to be. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#clue #existential #feel #fill #going

I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#books #come #could #exist #i

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

— Anne Lamott

#had #help #i #i was raised #moral