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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.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Way
Halls
Love
Rebel
Wildest
Think
Loves
Juvenile
Thinking
Daughter
Messed
Ones
Screwed
Lost
Desperately
Sometimes
Ache
Children
Hall

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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All I know is that after 10 years of being sober, with huge support to express my pain and anger and shadow, the grief and tears didn’t wash me away. They gave me my life back! They cleansed me, baptized me, hydrated the earth at my feet. They brought me home, to me, to the truth of me.
Anne Lamott
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Prayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. (In fact, these are probably the best possible conditions under which to pray.) Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.
Anne Lamott
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Without using the word, everyone started forgiving each other again. Just like that, from the no of all nothingness: you have a big tense mess and out of it comes some joy. It must be magic.
Anne Lamott
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Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.
Anne Lamott
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You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up when you're holding your breath. And writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like water - just as writing is also about dealing with the emptiness.
Anne Lamott
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I don't know much, but I understand how entirely doomed I am without God.
Anne Lamott
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Certainty is missing the point entirely.
Anne Lamott
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I do know the sorrow of being ordinary, and that much of our life is spent doing the crazy mental arithmetic of how, at any given moment, we might improve, or at least disguise or present our defects and screw-ups in either more charming or more intimidating ways.
Anne Lamott
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I'm here to be me, which is taking a great deal longer than I had hoped.
Anne Lamott
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This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds.
Anne Lamott
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I write everything as a wake-up call to myself and others, to anyone who may have gotten tired of hitting the snooze button.
Anne Lamott
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I've seen prayers answered. But often, in my experiences, if you get what you pray for, you've really shortchanged yourself.
Anne Lamott
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...after a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat.
Anne Lamott
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When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens like one of those fluted Japanese blossoms, flimsy and spastic, bright and warm. This almost always seems to happen in community.
Anne Lamott
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I can never tell what I'm doing when I'm in the middle of publication because I have no confidence. I have terrible self-esteem, along with boundless narcissism.
Anne Lamott
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It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.
Anne Lamott
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That thing you had to force yourself to do-the actual act of writing-turns out to be the best part.
Anne Lamott
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Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force (these are words we are allowed to use in California).
Anne Lamott
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I don't see myself as a deep philosopher. The things I write about tend to be what we all have to face, or consider, or experience, that I talk about with my friends and brothers. It's universal stuff, told in my own voice, my own details and truth, which is all I have to offer.
Anne Lamott
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One line of dialogue that rings true reveals character in a way that pages of description can't.
Anne Lamott