Bird by Bird Quotes

“I am learning slowly to bring my crazy pinball-machine mind back to this place...”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Bird by bird buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Look back on your life and find something small that made a big difference.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“She said that sometimes she uses a formula when writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Because for some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“But it is fantasy to think that successful writers do not have these bored, defeated hours, these hours of deep insecurity when one feels as small and jumpy as a water bug. They do. But they also often feel a great sense of amazement that they get to write, and they know that this is what they want to do for the rest of their lives.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“I try to write the books I would love to come upon, that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness—and that can make me laugh. When I am reading a book like this, I feel rich and profoundly relieved to be in the presence of someone who will share the truth with me, and throw the lights on a little, and I try to write these kinds of books. Books, for me, are medicine.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Even if only the people in your writing group read your memoirs or stories or novel, even if you only wrote your story so that one day your children would know what life was like when you were a child and you knew the name of every dog in town — still, to have written your version is an honorable thing to have done.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“In this dark and wounded society, writing can give you the pleasures of the woodpecker, of hollowing out a hole in a tree where you can build your nest and say, “This is my niche, this is where I live now, this is where I belong.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“The way I dance is by writing.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Throughout my childhood I believed that what I thought about was different from what other kids thought about. It was not necessarily more profound, but there was a struggle going on inside me to find some sort of creative or spiritual or aesthetic way of seeing the world and organizing it in my head.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“You begin to string words together like beads to tell a story. You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“I like to think that Henry James said his classic line, "A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost," while looking for his glasses, and that they were on top of his head.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“(Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said 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.)”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“I also tell them that sometimes when my writer friends are working, they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time. And sometimes when they are writing well, they feel that they are living up to something. It is as if the right words, the true words, are already inside them, and they just want to help them get out.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“You may have gotten into the habit of doubting that voice that was telling you quite clearly what was really going on. It is essential you get that back.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“If you don’t believe in what you are saying, there is no point in your saying it. You might as well call it a day and go bowling.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Mark Twain said that Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“whatever you come up with needs to suggest a voice that you are not trying to control. If you’re lost in the forest, let the horse find the way home. You have to stop directing, because you will only get in the way.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“But be careful: if your intuition says that your story sucks, make sure it really is your intuition and not your mother.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“whenever the world throws rose petals at you, which thrill and seduce the ego, beware. The cosmic banana peel is suddenly going to appear underfoot to make sure you don’t take it all too seriously, that you don’t fill up on junk food.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days—listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“I tell my students that the odds of their getting published and of it bringing them financial security, peace of mind, and even joy are probably not that great. Ruin, hysteria, bad skin, unsightly tics, ugly financial problems, maybe; but probably not peace of mind. I tell them that I think they ought to write anyway.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Do it every day for a while,” my father kept saying. “Do it as you would do scales on the piano. Do it by prearrangement with yourself. Do it as a debt of honor. And make a commitment to finishing things.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Remember that you own what happened to you.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“How alive am I willing to be?”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“And then, unbidden, seemingly out of nowhere, a thought or image arrives. Some will float into your head like goldfish, lovely, bright, orange, and weightless, and you follow them like a child at an aquarium that was thought to be without fish. Others will step of the shadows like Boo Radley and make you catch your breath or take a step backward. They're often so rich, these unbidden thoughts, and so clear that they feel indelible. But I say write them all down anyway.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird