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It was not facing what life dealt that made you crazy, but rather trying to set life straight where it was unstraightenable.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Straight
Crazy
Rather
Trying
Made
Life
Dealt
Facing

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.
Anne Lamott
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My friend Terry says that when you need to make a decision, in your work or otherwise, and you don’t know what to do, just do one thing or the other, because the worst that can happen is that you will have made a terrible mistake.
Anne Lamott
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The problem is acceptance, which is something we're taught not to do. We're taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given- that you are not in a productive creative period- you free yourself to begin filling up again.
Anne Lamott
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I’m probably just as good a mother as the next repressed, obsessive-compulsive paranoiac.
Anne Lamott
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This is a very violent place to live, the Earth, and we're a very violent species. Cain is still killing Abel. We see that every day.
Anne Lamott
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Alice Adams wrote a sweet note to me after my first novel came out when I was 26, and I was so blown away that I sent her a bunch of stamps by return mail. I have no idea what I was thinking. It was a star-struck impulse.
Anne Lamott
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Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.
Anne Lamott
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Sometimes I think that Jesus watches my neurotic struggles, and shakes his head and grips his forehead and starts tossing back mojitos.
Anne Lamott
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There is nothing as sweet as a comeback, when you are down and out, about to lose, and out of time.
Anne Lamott
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The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.
Anne Lamott
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I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is.
Anne Lamott
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I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good at it.
Anne Lamott
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I am a terrible and lazy Christian. I do not believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. I just skip about a third of it. I love the parts I love so much, but I find a lot of it just appalling. When a right-wing person quotes a passage in order to attack and stigmatize another person--or group of people--I just roll my eyes.
Anne Lamott
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Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all. Laugh, rest, slow down.
Anne Lamott
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Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor the enemy of the people. It will keep you insane your whole life.
Anne Lamott
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Feeding a baby is like filling a hole with putty - you get it in and then you sort of shave off all the excess around the hole and get it back in, like you're spackling.
Anne Lamott
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Why couldn't Jesus command us to obsess over everything, to try to control and manipulate people, to try not to breathe at all, or to pay attention, stomp away to brood when people annoy us, and then eat a big bag of Hershey's Kisses in bed?
Anne Lamott
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I woke up full of hate and fear the day before the most recent peace march in San Francisco. This was disappointing: I'd hoped to wake up feeling somewhere between Virginia Woolf and Wavy Gravy.
Anne Lamott
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I was raised with no religious training or influence. Except the influence was to be a moral and ethical person at the secular level. And to be a peace marcher, an activist for civil rights, peace and justice.
Anne Lamott
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Mostly what happens in the novels never happened in real life.
Anne Lamott