Quote

by then I'd figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it's the gift of feeling floppier.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Feelings
Tension
Look
Breath
Looks
Breaths
Good
Held
Gift
Failure
Needing
Break
Figured
Feeling
Breaks

More quotes by 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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We are not here to see through one another, but to see one another through.
Anne Lamott
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We all have the dark, ignorant shadow inside us. I have worked endlessly to reveal it and heal it in me, but of course there's some primitive weird stuff in me. The Tea Party is about exhorting white supremacy, though, so I've had a tiny bit of trouble experiencing sympathy.
Anne Lamott
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Talking to the parents of older kids was helpful for me, since parents of kids the same age as yours won't admit how horrible their children are.
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Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.
Anne Lamott
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I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and help save the world.
Anne Lamott
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I took notes on the people around me, in my town, in my family, in my memory. I took notes on my own state of mind, my grandiosity, the low self-esteem. I wrote down the funny stuff I overheard. I learned to be like a ship's rat, veined ears trembling, and I learned to scribble it all down.
Anne Lamott
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If you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses dont go running all over an island looking for boats to save they just stand there shining.
Anne Lamott
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All parents are an embarrassment to their kids. Often grandparents are the relief. Kids don't have to resist you.
Anne Lamott
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People help you or you help them and when we offer or receive help, we take in each other. And then we are saved.
Anne Lamott
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Dialogue that is written in dialect is very tiring to read. If you can do it brilliantly, fine. If other writers read your work and rave about your use of dialect, go for it. But be positive that you do it well, because otherwise it is a lot of work to read short stories or novels that are written in dialect. It makes our necks feel funny.
Anne Lamott
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...It really IS easier to experience spiritual connection when your life is in the process of coming apart.
Anne Lamott
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I got one of the five golden tickets to be a writer, and I take that seriously. I don't love my own work at all, but I love my own self. I love that I've been given the chance to capture the stories that come through me.
Anne Lamott
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We all know we're going to die what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.
Anne Lamott
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I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from.
Anne Lamott
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... one of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people. [p. 65]
Anne Lamott
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You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart--your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born.
Anne Lamott
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Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.
Anne Lamott
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But easy's like, who cares? Easy's like, how much is easy going to get you?
Anne Lamott
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I spend most of my time alone, because I so value and thrive in the quiet. Heaven.
Anne Lamott