I Was Moved: Inspirational Quotes from Anne Lamott’s Latest Book

A few months back I had an opportunity to see Anne Lamott speak. I was familiar with her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, but I wasn’t sure I ever read it. It was lumped in my mind with other texts, such as Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones and Julie Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, both of which I had read.

These are books I classified as being about the writing practice. They were more inspirational than instructional, providing encouragement for writers to begin the practice of writing. I had been fortunate enough to take a workshop with Natalie Goldberg once and had done a longer seminar about Cameron’s book, where we worked through her suggestions week-by-week. I continued meeting with some of the women I met in the class for almost a decade after.

But I knew less about Anne Lamott. I followed her on Facebook as any “good” writer should, and attended her talk out of curiosity and I suppose duty. My friend and I were surprised when we arrived at the theater and the line wound down the street. The event didn’t even start on time because people were still taking their seat in the packed 1,500-seat theater long…