Stitches Quotes

“Some people have a thick skin and you don't. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pain, but that is an appropriate response to this world.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair

“Ram Dass, who described himself as a Hin-Jew, said that ultimately we’re all just walking each other home. I love that. I try to live by it.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“But what if the great secret insider-trading truth is that you don't ever get over the biggest losses in your life? Is that good news, bad news, or both? . . . . The pain does grow less acute, but the insidious palace lie that we will get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention the most important places we have been to. Pretending that things are nicely boxed up and put away robs us of great riches.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair

“What saved me was that I found gentle, loyal and hilarious companions, which is at the heart of meaning: maybe we don’t find a lot of answers to life’s tougher questions, but if we find a few true friends, that’s even better. They help you see who you truly are, which is not always the loveliest possible version of yourself, but then comes the greatest miracle of all—they still love you. They keep you company as perhaps you become less of a whiny baby, if you accept their help.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“You have to keep taking the next necessary stitch, and the next one, and the next. Without stitches, you just have rags. And we are not rags.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“It is most comfortable to be invisible, to observe life from a distance, at one with our own intoxicating superior thoughts. But comfort and isolation are not where the surprises are. They are not where hope is.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“As far as I can recall, none of the adults in my life ever once remembered to say, “Some people have a thick skin and you don’t. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pain, but that is an appropriate response to this world. The cost is high, but the blessing of being compassionate is beyond your wildest dreams. However, you’re not going to feel that a lot in seventh grade. Just hang on.”
― Anne Lamott , Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair

“When you love something like reading—or drawing or music or nature—it surrounds you with a sense of connection to something great.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“I know God enjoys hearing my take on how best we should all proceed, as I'm always full of useful advice. I'm sure God says either, "Oh, I so love Annie's selfless and evolved thoughts," or else "Jeez. What a head case.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“We live stitch by stitch, when we’re lucky. If you fixate on the big picture, the whole shebang, the overview, you miss the stitching. And maybe the stitching is crude, or it is unraveling, but if it were precise, we’d pretend that life was just fine and running like a Swiss watch. This is not helpful if on the inside our understanding is that life is more often a cuckoo clock with rusty gears. In the aftermath of loss, we do what we’ve always done, although we are changed, maybe more afraid. We do what we can, as well as we can. My pastor, Veronica, one Sunday told the story of a sparrow lying in the street with its legs straight up in the air, sweating a little under its feathery arms. A warhorse walks up to the bird and asks, “What on earth are you doing?” The sparrow replies, “I heard the sky was falling, and I wanted to help.” The horse laughs a big, loud, sneering horse laugh, and says, “Do you really think you’re going to hold back the sky, with those scrawny little legs?” And the sparrow says, “One does what one can.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“Periods in the wilderness or desert were not lost time. You might find life, wildflowers, fossils, sources of water. I wish there were shortcuts to wisdom and self-knowledge: cuter abysses or three-day spa wilderness experiences. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way. I so resent this.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“We live stitch by stitch, when we’re lucky. If you fixate on the big picture, the whole shebang, the overview, you miss the stitching. And maybe the stitching is crude, or it is unraveling, but if it were precise, we’d pretend that life was just fine and running like a Swiss watch. This is not helpful if on the inside our understanding is that life is more often a cuckoo clock with rusty gears.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“When you can step back at moments like these and see what is happening, when you watch people you love under fire or evaporating, you realize that the secret of life is patch patch patch. Thread your needle, make a knot, find one place on the other piece of torn cloth where you can make one stitch that will hold. And do it again. And again. And again.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair

“This is who I want to be in the world. This is who I think we are supposed to be, people who help call forth human beings from deep inside hopelessness.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“To heal, it seems we have to stand in the middle of the horror, at the foot of the cross, and wait out another’s suffering where that person can see us. To be honest, that sucks. It’s the worst, even if you are the mother of God.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“While it is hard to fathom who we are and how we are to live when public chaos shatters our routine, the slow-motion pain of each private death and cataclysm we endure is harder. Each slams us off our feet, yet we have agreed to pretend to be fine again at some point, ideally as soon as possible, so as not to seem self-indulgent or embarrass anybody. Then people can get on with their lives.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“I saw a button pin once that said: “I’m not tense. I’m just very, very alert.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“At this point, a reasonable person can’t help thinking how grotesque life is. It can so suck, to use the theological term. It can be healthy to hate what life has given you, and to insist on being a big mess for a while. This takes great courage. But then, at some point, the better of two choices is to get back up on your feet and live again.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“What if you wake up at sixty and realize that you forgot to wake up, and you never became the person you were born to be, and now your hair is falling out?”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“Say it's true: It is what it is. We're social, tribal, musical animals, walking percussion instruments. Most of us do the best we can. We show up. We strive for gratitude, and try not to be such babies.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair

“What a paradox: that we connect with God, with divinity, in our flesh and blood and time and space. We connect with God in our humanity. A great truth, attributed to Emily Dickinson, is that “hope inspires the good to reveal itself.” This is almost all I ever need to remember. Gravity and sadness yank us down, and hope gives us a nudge to help one another get back up or to sit with the fallen on the ground, in the abyss, in solidarity.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“ultimately we’re all just walking each other home.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“Gravity and sadness yank us down, and hope gives us a nudge to help one another get back up or to sit with the fallen on the ground, in the abyss, in solidarity.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“I mean “God” as Jane Kenyon described God: “I am food on the prisoner’s plate . . . / the patient gardener / of the dry and weedy garden . . . / the stone step, / the latch, and the working hinge.” I mean “God” as shorthand for the Good, for the animating energy of love; for Life, for the light that radiates from within people and from above; in the energies of nature, even in our rough, messy selves.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“The pain does grow less acute, but the insidious palace lie that we will get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention the most important places we have been to.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“When you love something like reading—or drawing or music or nature—it surrounds you with a sense of connection to something great. If you are lucky enough to know this, then your search for meaning involves whatever that Something is. It’s an alchemical blend of affinity and focus that takes us to a place within that feels as close as we ever get to “home.” It’s like pulling into our own train station after a long trip—joy, relief, a pleasant exhaustion.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“We, too, are shadow and light. We are not supposed to know this, or be all these different facets of humanity, bright and dark. We are raised to be bright and shiny, but there is meaning in the acceptance of our dusky and dappled side, and also in defiance.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“When we agree to (or get tricked into) being part of something bigger than our own wired, fixated minds, we are saved. When we search for something larger than our own selves to hook into, we can come through whatever life throws at us.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“It can be too sad here. We so often lose our way.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair

“Sometimes love does not look like what you had in mind.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair