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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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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Good
Time
Think
Thinking
Waste
Afraid
Writing

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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I'm not going to change the way people think about me, but I can say you know what? I'm not going to carry that in my backpack.
Anne Lamott
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Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, I hate you, God. That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.
Anne Lamott
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In fact, there's really only one thing that everything's made of it's energy.
Anne Lamott
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The women's movement burst forth when I was fifteen. That was when I began to believe that life might semi-work out after all. The cavalry had arrived. Women were starting to say that you got to tell the truth now, that you had to tell the truth if you were going to heal and have an authentic life.
Anne Lamott
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Mothers are supposed to listen and, afterward, to respond with some wisdom and perspective, but these things were not my mother's strong suit.
Anne Lamott
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And my fear of failure has been lifelong and deep. If you are what you do- and I think my parents may have accidentally given me this idea- and you do poorly, what then? It’s over you’re wiped out. All those prophecies you heard in the dark have come true, and people can see the real you, see what a schmendrick you are, what a fraud.
Anne Lamott
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Grief is just so scary.... If we finally begin to cry all those suppressed tears, they will surely wash us away like the Mississippi River. That's what our parents told us. We got sent to our rooms for having huge feelings. In my family, if you cried or got angry, you didn't get dinner.
Anne Lamott
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When we're dealing with the people in our family - no matter how annoying or gross they may be, no matter how self-inflicted their suffering may appear, no matter how afflicted they are with ignorance, prejudice or nose hairs - we give from the deepest parts of ourselves.
Anne Lamott
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Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.
Anne Lamott
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You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.
Anne Lamott
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It was simple reality - most competitive tennis players in my day were privileged, spoiled, entitled and white. Also, many of them were beautiful, fit, tan and of good stock - great big hair and white teeth and long legs. Then there were the rest of us.
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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Shirley Jackson said that a confused reader is an antagonistic reader, and I live by that. It's okay to start anywhere, and to let yourself write a big sloppy overly-detailed first draft. You just jump in, knowing that the water will be cold at first, but no one is making you swim.
Anne Lamott
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Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting.
Anne Lamott
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The evidence is in, and you are the verdict.
Anne Lamott
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I like the desert for short periods of time, from inside a car, with the windows rolled up, and the doors locked. I prefer beach resorts with room service.
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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Never compare your insides to everyone else's outsides.
Anne Lamott
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Hope begins in the dark.
Anne Lamott
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Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?
Anne Lamott