Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. 

5/5 rating. 220 pages.

Book #67 of 2020. Read September 27, 2020.

This is an absolutely amazing book about writing and life: one of my favorite books that I have ever read!

Anne is hilarious! Her writing is dark, poignant, and just so accurate. I took so many quotes from this book as her irreverent descriptions of writing and life ring true.

If you’ve ever thought about writing, or want to maybe just understand authors, and their books a little better, this is an absolute must-read! I think the best way to explain more about this book is to include some of her quotes:

– “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.”

– “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. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”

– “I say don’t worry about plot. Worry about the characters. Let what they say or do reveal who they are, and be involved in their lives, and keep asking yourself, Now what happens?”

– “Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.”

– “Take the attitude that what you are thinking and feeling is valuable stuff, and then be naive enough to get it all down on paper.”

– “And I don’t think you have that kind of time either. I don’t think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won’t be good enough at it, and I don’t think you have time to waste on someone who does not respond to you with kindness and respect.”

Quotes:

“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.”

“He taught the prisoners and me to put a little bit down on paper every day, and to read all the great books and plays we could get our hands on. He taught us to read poetry. He taught us to be bold and original and to let ourselves make mistakes, and that Thurber was right when he said, ‘You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backwards.’”

“…for a life oriented to leisure is in the end a life oriented to death – the greatest leisure of all.” – Anne’s father

“‘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.’”

“They’ll see the world through new eyes.”

“But 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.”

“[G]ood writing is about telling the truth.”

“You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind – a scene, a locale, a character, whatever – and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind.”

“[F]or one thing, becoming a better writer is going to help you become a better reader, and that is the real payoff.”

“Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up.”

“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. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of all the things that you don’t get in real life – wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift.”

“E. L. Doctorow once said that ‘writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’”

“Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

“One line of dialogue that rings true reveals character in a way that pages of description can’t.”

“I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and cry against injustice.”

“Nothing is as important as a likeable narrator. Nothing holds a story together better.” – Ethan Canin

“The material has got to work on its own, and the dream must be vivid and continuous.”

“[Alice Adams] uses a formula when writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending.”

“If you can get their speech mannerisms right, you will know what they’re wearing and driving and maybe thinking, and how they were raised, and what they feel.”

“You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should confirm what you’ve observed in the world.”

“Only in the comics and formula movies do we get any pleasure from destroying totally evil and sinister villains, because in those cases they’ve been systematically depersonalized. They commit only acts of atrocity and sociopathology, and they say terribly evil things, and then we get to ritually kill them.”

“Writing is about learning to pay attention and to communicate what is going on.”

“So I keep trying gently to bring my mind back to what is really there to be seen, maybe to be seen and noted with a kind of reverence.”

“Think of those times when you’ve read prose or poetry that is presented in such a way that you have a fleeting sense of being startled by beauty or insight, by a glimpse into someone’s soul. All of a sudden everything seems to fit together or at least to have some meaning for a moment. 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. When this happens, everything feels more spacious.”

“I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world – present and in awe.”

“But now I think we sometimes buy into these concepts because it is so much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality. I don’t think anything is the opposite of love. Reality is unforgivingly complex.”

“If you don’t believe in what you are saying, there is no point in your saying it.”

“You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side.”

“I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing.”

“Above me, wind does its best

to blow leaves off

the aspen tree a month too soon.

No use wind. All you succeed

in doing is making music, the noise

of failure growing beautiful.” – Bill Holm, ‘August in Waterton, Alberta’

“‘Watch her carefully right now,’ she said, ‘because she’s teaching you how to live.’”

“To live as if we are dying gives us a chance to experience some real presence. Time is so full for people who are dying in a conscious way, full in the way that life is for children. They spend big round hours.”

“And even though their son will always be alive in their hearts, like Pammy and my dad will be alive in mine – and maybe this is the only way we ever really have anyone – there is still something to be said for painting portraits of the people we have loved, for trying to express those moments that seem so inexpressibly beautiful, the ones that change us and deepen us.”

“You have made the mistake of thinking that everything that has happened to you is interesting.”

“Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer’s job is to see what’s behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words – not just into any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues.”

“You are going to have to give and give and give, or there’s no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward.”

“The world’s an orphan’s home.” – Marianne Moore

“It is one of the greatest feelings known to humans, the feeling of being the host, of hosting people, of being the person to whom they come for food and drink and company. This is what the writer has to offer.”

“If you’re not enough before the gold medal, you won’t be enough with it.” – Cool Runnings

“‘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.’”

“Write about your childhoods, I tell them for the umpteenth time. Write about that time in your life when you were so intensely interested in the world, when your powers of observation were at their most acute, when you felt things so deeply. Exploring and understanding your childhood will give you the ability to empathize, and that understanding and empathy will teach you to write with intelligence and insight and compassion.”

“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.”

“How alive am I willing to be?”

“‘So why does our writing matter again?’ they ask. Because of the spirit, I say. Because of the heart. Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.”

“It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”

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