Anne Lamott
American novelist, memoirist, and one of the most beloved contemporary voices on faith, recovery, writing, and the practice of being human. Born in 1954 in San Francisco and raised by atheist intellectual parents, she came to her own idiosyncratic Presbyterian faith through addiction recovery and the slow work of single motherhood. Her books — Bird by Bird (1994, the most-quoted contemporary book on writing), Operating Instructions, Traveling Mercies, Plan B, Help Thanks Wow (2012), Hallelujah Anyway, Almost Everything, Dusk Night Dawn, and most recently Somehow (2024) — have brought a generation of readers to a form of contemplative life that doesn't require leaving New Jersey or Oakland or your messy kitchen. Her three essential prayers — Help, Thanks, and Wow — have become contemporary spiritual shorthand.
quotes in library
Quotes by Anne Lamott
106 quotes“Somehow, love keeps showing up.”
“Even now, light is coming.”
“Help. Thanks. Wow. Three essential prayers.”
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”
“You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.”
“You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss.”
“But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up.”
“My mind is a bad neighborhood I try not to go into alone.”
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories.”
“Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past.”
“Grace meets you exactly where you are, but it doesn't leave you there.”
“Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
“My idea of perfect company is someone who will keep me distracted from my own thoughts.”
“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”
“You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.”
“The first draft is the down draft — you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft — you fix it up.”
“Even now, hold to hope.”
Explore More Teachers
Discover wisdom from 500+ spiritual teachers across all traditions.
Browse All Teachers