Some nuggets from Anne‘s keynote speech and interview at the Festival of Faith and Writing this weekend.

“It’s not ‘take and figure it out.’ It’s ‘take and eat.'”

“Keep your butt in the chair. That’s the secret of life.”

“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”

“There’s who you are and who your best friend thinks you are.”

“The horrible part [of writing] is that you have to sit down and do it. And it is going to go badly, I promise you. You will be scared by how inept you are. But you just do it.”

“If you can’t give me an hour from the mostly meaningful BS that is our lives, then Jesus can’t even help you.”

“I get people water and I try to return phone calls. That’s my mission statement.”

“… the heartbreaking pain of being separate from yourself and God.”

“‘Anyone would understand if…’ That’s the voice of the distractor and seducer.”

“It’s very inconvenient to the world for you to insist on the right for your creative truth.”

“The great prayer of what. ever. You promised you’d never leave me and I’m gonna hold you to that.”

“Newtown happened on a Friday, and we’ll know on Tuesday that grace will have been sufficient.”

“Let your heart stay broken so that the light can get out and bathe us.”

“We start where we are and then we stick together.”

[to change communities]”Subversively sneak books into their hands. Give them Mary Oliver. Give them funny Christians. Casually. As if it’s not a big deal. Because it will gradually crack the shell they’ve built around themselves.”

“The answer to that question — and I hate this. I hate this, I hate this, I hate this — is we become responsible for our own healing. We remain cracked.”

“You are loved and chosen. This is a come-as-you-are community. You’re pre-approved. We want you. It’s like me looking in the mirror at those jiggly thighs — ‘You look amazing.’ You look like the Kingdom.”

“G.O.D.: The Gift of Desperation. You may have run out of good ideas and the angels are jumping up and down, eating Ding Dongs, because you’ve finally discovered the gift of desperation.”

“I believe in crying. Crying is baptism. It moisturizes the ground at your feet. Holy ground.”

“Publishing will make you crazier than you ever imagined. But writing may bring you peace. If you keep your butt in the chair.”