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I think that is why we stay close to our families, no matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or dull- because when people have seen you at your worst, you don’t have to put on the mask as much.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Worst
Annoying
Seen
Mask
Matter
Dull
Much
Families
Think
Deeply
Thinking
Members
People
Close
Stay
Neurotic

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.
Anne Lamott
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I love memoirs. They are probably my favorite literary form, along with biographies. The more confessional, the better. There is so, so, so little truth in the popular culture, and I am starved and grateful for any I can find.
Anne Lamott
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I just can't get over how much babies cry. I really had no idea what I was getting into. To tell you the truth, I thought it would be more like getting a cat.
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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Now she and I sit together in her room and eat chocolate, and I tell her that in a very long time when we both to go heaven, we should try to get chairs next to each other, close to the dessert table.
Anne Lamott
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I do know the sorrow of being ordinary, and that much of our life is spent doing the crazy mental arithmetic of how, at any given moment, we might improve, or at least disguise or present our defects and screw-ups in either more charming or more intimidating ways.
Anne Lamott
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And that almost everyone was struggling to wake up, to be loved, and not feel so afraid all the time. That's what the cars, degrees, booze, and drugs were about.
Anne Lamott
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... one of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people. [p. 65]
Anne Lamott
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Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.
Anne Lamott
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If you asked me, parents were supposed to affect the life of their child in such a way that the child grows up to be responsible, able to participate in life and in community.
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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I got one of the five golden tickets to be a writer, and I take that seriously. I don't love my own work at all, but I love my own self. I love that I've been given the chance to capture the stories that come through me.
Anne Lamott
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We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues.
Anne Lamott
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I’ve heard it said that every day you need half an hour of quiet time for yourself, or your Self, unless you’re incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour. I promise you, it is there. Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.
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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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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The stuff I write about is pretty universal, the things my closest friends and I talk about - our anxiety about being here on this scary planet, during these scary times, as vulnerable as kittens, having lost so many people I couldn't live without.
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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Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right.
Anne Lamott
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Reading poetry and reading the great works of the canon that we were reading in the '60s and the '70s and '80s was mind altering.
Anne Lamott