Bird by Bird Quotes

“To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass—seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“hope, as Chesterton said, is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“We want a sense that an important character, like a narrator, is reliable. We want to believe that a character is not playing ages or being coy or being manipulative, but is telling the truth to the best of his or her ability...We do not wish to be crudely manipulated...We want to be massaged by a masseur, not whapped by a carpet beater.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Life is not a submarine.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“No one has expressed it better than a great novelist I heard once on a talk show who said something like "You want to know the price I pay for being a writer? Okay, I'll tell you. I travel by plane a great deal. And I'm usually seated next to some huge businessman who works on files or his laptop computer for a while, and then notices me and asks me what I do. And I say I'm a writer. Then there's always a terrible silence. Then he says eagerly, 'Have you written anything I might have heard of?”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Maybe what you care most passionately about are fasting and high colonics--cappuccino enemas, say. This is fine, but we do not want you to write about them; we will secretly believe that you are simply spiritualizing your hysteria. There are millions of people already doing this at churches and New Age festivals across the land.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It's a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of the truth, and then you give your heart to expressing it clearly.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“The world can't give that serenity," he said. "The world can't give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts."
"I hate that," I said.
"I know. But the good news is that by the same token, the world can't take it away.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“There is ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness, a sign that God is implicit in all of creation. Or maybe you are not predisposed to see the world sacramentally, to see everything as an outward and visible sign of inward, invisible grace. This does not mean that you are worthless Philistine scum. Anyone who wants to can be surprised by the beauty or pain of the natural world, of the human mind and heart, and can try to capture just that—the details, the nuance, what is. If you start to look around, you will start to see.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“You want to avoid at all costs drawing your characters on those that already exist in other works of fiction. You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should confirm what you’ve observed in the world.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“A big heart is both a clunky and a delicate thing; it doesn't protect itself and it doesn't hide.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“What if you wake up some day, and you’re 65… and you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life?”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of—please forgive me—wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Think of a fine painter attempting to capture an inner vision, beginning with one corner of the canvas, painting what he thinks should be there, not quite pulling it off, covering it over with white paint, and trying again, each time finding out what his painting isn't, until finally he finds out what it is.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn’t nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“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 don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it, too.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Plot grows out of character. If you focus on who the people in your story are, if you sit and write about two people you know and are getting to know better day by day, something is bound to happen.

Characters should not, conversely, serve as pawns for some plot you've dreamed up. Any plot you impose on your characters will be onomatopoetic: PLOT.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“You can't find your true voice and peer behind the door and report honestly and clearly to us if your parents are reading over your shoulder. They are probably the ones who told you not to open that door in the first place. You can tell if you they're there because a small voice will say, 'Oh, whoops, don't say that, that's a secret,' or 'That's a bad work,' or 'Don't tell anyone you jack off. They'll all start doing it.' So you have to breathe or pray or do therapy to send them away. Write as if your parents are dead.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“...but you have to remind yourself that perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act--truth is always subversive.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“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 wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Try to write in a directly emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique. Don't be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.
If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don't worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act - truth is always subversive.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird