Quote

It turned out this man worked for the Dalai Lama. And she said gently-that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born-and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Men
Born
Lovely
Problem
Turned
Needs
Worked
Dalai
Trying
Protect
Lama
Going
Possible
Gently
Something
Start
Distracted
Believe
Wrong
Buddhist
Things
Bigs
Perfectly

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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...[T]here should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.
Anne Lamott
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My understanding is that you get to choose which of your thoughts to go with.
Anne Lamott
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I love silence. I seek and create it at every opportunity. I need it to work.
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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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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I spend most of my time alone, because I so value and thrive in the quiet. Heaven.
Anne Lamott
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In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.
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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I don't want something special. I want something beautifully plain.
Anne Lamott
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Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in a life-threatening way, that had caused me a long time ago to give up all hope of ever feeling good about having had her as a mother.
Anne Lamott
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Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of humor or insider pathos or meaning. All of us can sing the same song, and there will still be four billion different renditions.
Anne Lamott
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For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are our ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food.
Anne Lamott
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If you fixate on the big picture, the whole shebang, the overview, you miss the stitching.
Anne Lamott
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You keep working on your piece over and over, trying to get the sections and paragraphs and sentences and the whole just right, but there's a point at which you can tell you've begun hurting the work with your perfectionism. Then you have to release the work to new eyes.
Anne Lamott
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I see that children fill the existential hollowness many people feel that when we have children, we know they will need us, and maybe love us, but we don't have a clue how hard it is going to be.
Anne Lamott
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Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence.
Anne Lamott
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I do not understand how deeply people seem to like my work - but I love that people feel I have helped them through hardships, and also have shared my experience of living a more spiritual and present life. It's so great to be able to make people laugh, because this is so often how we get our selves back.
Anne Lamott
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Some people have a thick skin and you don’t. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pain, but that is an appropriate response to this world. The cost is high, but the blessing of being compassionate is beyond your wildest dreams.
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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All parents are an embarrassment to their kids. Often grandparents are the relief. Kids don't have to resist you.
Anne Lamott