I might not remember how the sky looked on any given day. I do remember, though, what it was like to be a boy beneath a sky..

Worry is a mean-faced dwarf who beats on your heart like a kettledrum..

You have a pet theory, one you have been turning over for years, that life itself is a kind of Rube Goldberg device, an extremely complicated machine….

Anyone who has ever experienced love knows that you can have too much or too little. You can have love that parches, love that defeats. You can have ….

I write out of gratitude for all the books I have loved over the years..

I suppose that when you're growing up, you're bound to reach an age when you feel buffeted by all the changes in your life, when either your mind beg….

Who was it who said that every virtue contains its corresponding vice? C.S. Lewis? Virginia Woolf? You forget. But it has always worried you that wha….

The living carry us inside them like pearls. We survive only so long as they remember us..

Sometimes you imagine that everything could have been different for you, that if only you had gone right one day when you chose to go left, you would….

It's like you're born with all these blessings, only you don't realize they're blessings until you lose them. And if you're thick-headed enough, like….

Dreaming was easier than screaming, and screaming was easier than worrying, and worrying was easier than crying, which was what she knew she would be….

...When you die, the energy that kept you alive filters into the people you loved. Did you know that? It's like a fire you've tended all your life, a….

With every sentence she writes, Davis freshens the senses. Her novels achieve a tone that’s unlike anyone else’s, creating an atmosphere you don’t so….

In seventh grade I gradually became aware that that quickness of feeling was something I was supposed to have outgrown. I was rather guileless, I thi….

There was no one alive who did not contribute his share of mystery to the world..

There are times in your life when, despite the steel weight of your memories and the sadness that seems to lie at your feet like a shadow, you sudden….

You could not presume that people were healthy. You could not presume that they would welcome the little nudges and jostlings of life. You had to beh….

I was wholly invested in my friendships. I might have tested them sometimes, but only to reassure myself that they were permanent. A mistake, of cour….

I'm uncommonly slow to show my work to other people, and by the time I do I've usually exhausted myself so completely that all I really want is for s….

People who read Anne Lamott, like people who read Anne Rice, believe that tragedy is romantic, but the people who read Anne Lamott believe it ironica….

If your reading life and your friendships overlap, that's just a nice coincidence - a case where the conversation you're having with books and the co….