Anne Lamott

You want to give me chocolate and flowers? That would be great. I love them both. I just don't want them out of guilt, and I don't want them if you're not going to give them to all the people who helped mother our children. ”

I am skittish about relationships, as most of the marriages I've seen up close have been ruinous for one or both parties. ”

I happen to be a Christian, but I know that there is one God. People worshipping goodness and love and kindness and truth are worshipping the same God. ”

I just try to love and serve everyone, and bring everyone water, and lend an ear; that's what Jesus said to do. ”

Sometimes I think God loves the ones who most desperately ache and are most desperately lost - his or her wildest, most messed-up children - the way you'd ache and love a screwed-up rebel daughter in juvenile hall. ”

Evangelical Christians and I can sit down and talk one on one about how much we love Jesus, and yet I'm not carried in Christian bookstores. ”

I used to love to untangle chains when I was a child. I had thin, busy fingers, and I never gave up. Perhaps there was a psychiatric component to my concentration but like much of my psychic damage, this worked to everyone's advantage. ”

Mothering has been the richest experience of my life, but I am still opposed to Mother's Day. It perpetuates the dangerous idea that all parents are somehow superior to non-parents. ”

Presents can make up for some of the disappointments that life doles out, such as it makes almost no sense and is coming to an end more quickly than ever. ”

Mother's Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path. ”