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Write as if your parents are dead.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Dead
Parent
Write
Writing
Parents

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there... When nothing new can get in, that's death.
Anne Lamott
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Learning to love back is the hardest part of being alive.
Anne Lamott
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I am an Aries. Although I do not believe in astrology, I think this is exactly the right sign to have been born under.
Anne Lamott
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You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind.
Anne Lamott
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Joy is the best makeup. But a little lipstick is a close runner-up.
Anne Lamott
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We can't understand when we're pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here, on Earth, for a time - like the Egyptians with their pyramids, only with children.
Anne Lamott
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E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.
Anne Lamott
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I don't have any romantic views of parenting. Every step of the way it's really hard. It's a dangerous world, physically and psychologically.
Anne Lamott
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A priest friend of mine has cautioned me away from the standard God of our childhoods, who loves you and guides you and then, if you are bad, roasts you: God as a high school principal in a gray suit who never remembered your name but is always leafing unhappily through your files.
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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Novels ought to have hope at least, American novels ought to have hope. French novels don't need to. We mostly win wars, they lose them. Of course, they did hide more Jews than many other countries, and this is a form of winning.
Anne Lamott
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Certainty is missing the point entirely.
Anne Lamott
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The Giants are usually described as rag tag, kind of a great garage sale team, and the Democrats are described as the Mommies to the Republican Daddies and everyone hates the mommies, but wait, wait - I didn't intend to get into the pathos and thrill of being a Democratic Giants fan.
Anne Lamott
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Most people's intuitions are drowned out by folk sayings. We have a moment of real feeling or insight, and then we come up with a folk saying that captures the insight in a kind of wash. The intuition may be real and ripe, fresh with possibilities, but the folk saying is guaranteed to be a cliche, stale and self-contained.
Anne Lamott
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Hope begins in the dark.
Anne Lamott
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Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me,' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' A woman I know says, for her morning prayer, 'Whatever,' and then for the evening, 'Oh, well,' but has conceded that these prayers are more palatable for people without children.
Anne Lamott
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I've always thought I could use my brain and my heart to jockey everyone around to the good. But life is not jockeyable. When you try, you make people infinitely crazier than they already were, including or especially yourself.
Anne Lamott
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The earth is rocky and full of roots it's clay, and it seems doomed and polluted, but you dig little holes for the ugly shriveled bulbs, throw in a handful of poppy seeds, and cover it all over, and you know you'll never see it again - it's death and clay and shrivel, and your hands are nicked from the rocks, your nails black with soil.
Anne Lamott
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'Help' is a prayer that is always answered.
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