Quote

Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Looking
Floor
Keep
Bringing
Wayward
Back
Drop
Yard
Trying
Newspapers
Puppy
Every
Neighbor
Yards
Mind
Patience
Newspaper
Time
Train
Kick
Paper
Kicks

More quotes by 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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My mother's eyes were large and brown, like my son's, but unlike Sam's, they were always frantic, like a hummingbird who can't quite find the flower but keeps jabbing around.
Anne Lamott
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Writing is how I communicate my deepest beliefs, and what I hope are helpful observations about our dual citizenship, as children of God, as regular old mixed-up, worried, flawed, precious human beings.
Anne Lamott
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Dancing almost always turns out to be a good idea.
Anne Lamott
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Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act - truth is always subversive.
Anne Lamott
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We want a sense that an important character, like a narrator, is reliable. We want to believe that a character is not playing ages or being coy or being manipulative, but is telling the truth to the best of his or her ability...We do not wish to be crudely manipulated...We want to be massaged by a masseur, not whapped by a carpet beater.
Anne Lamott
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You want to protect your child from pain, and what you get instead is life, and grace and though theologians insist that grace is freely given, the truth is that sometimes you pay for it through the nose. And you can't pay your child's way.
Anne Lamott
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I'd wanted to be a writer my whole life. But when I finally made it, I felt like a greyhound catching the mechanical rabbit she'd been chasing for so long--discovering it was merely metal, wrapped in cloth. It wasn't alive it had no spirit. It was fake.
Anne Lamott
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If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.
Anne Lamott
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I can tell you that what you're looking for is already inside you.
Anne Lamott
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You have to be a warrior and say, Maybe it's everyone else's system, but it's not mine. (from her recent interview here, on Goodreads)
Anne Lamott
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The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines.
Anne Lamott
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There is ecstasy in paying attention.
Anne Lamott
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I do not have deep theological understanding or opinion, but I do not read the Bible as the literal word of God.
Anne Lamott
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Everything takes me forever. It's all lurch, flail. I hope that is good news to you writers.
Anne Lamott
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My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.
Anne Lamott
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A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I'm not going to take anything away from you, you have to give it to Me.
Anne Lamott
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I would seriously rather be in a long line at the DMV than eat with people I don't know.
Anne Lamott
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It's better to be kind than to be right.
Anne Lamott
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I thought the secret of life was obvious: be here now, love as if your whole life depended on it, find your life's work, and try to get hold of a giant panda.
Anne Lamott