Quote

Everything was coming together by coming apart . . . It is the most difficult Zen practice to leave people to their destiny, even though it's painful - just loving them, and breathing with them, and distracting them in a sweet way, and laughing with them . . . if something was not my problem, I probably did not have the solution.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Something
Probably
Painful
Way
Practice
Solutions
People
Though
Loving
Difficult
Destiny
Problem
Sweet
Distracting
Together
Laughing
Solution
Everything
Coming
Breathing
Even
Leave
Apart

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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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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I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and save the world. You sent money to the Red Cross, you registered people to vote, you marched in rallies, stood in vigils, picked up litter.
Anne Lamott
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You should not bring more items and hurdles to the obstacle course.
Anne Lamott
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I don't see myself as a deep philosopher. The things I write about tend to be what we all have to face, or consider, or experience, that I talk about with my friends and brothers. It's universal stuff, told in my own voice, my own details and truth, which is all I have to offer.
Anne Lamott
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Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.
Anne Lamott
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After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid.
Anne Lamott
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To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass.
Anne Lamott
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My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land, and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear.
Anne Lamott
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There are a lot of us, some published, some not, who think the literary life is the loveliest one possible, this life of reading and writing and corresponding. We think this life is nearly ideal.
Anne Lamott
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Slowly, after dozens of rejection slips and failures and false starts and postponed dreams - what Langston Hughes called dreams deferred - I stepped onto the hallowed ground of being a published novelist, and then 15 years later, I even started to make real money.
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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No one can appropriate God, goodness, the Bible or Jesus. It just seems that way.
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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...because when people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much.
Anne Lamott
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Laughter is carbonated holiness.
Anne Lamott
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You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself.
Anne Lamott
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butterflies were wind energy made visible.
Anne Lamott
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My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him.
Anne Lamott
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Most marriages are a mess, and the children get caught between two bitter, antagonistic parents. My parents stayed married for 27 unhappy years, till their kids were grown, and this was a catastrophe for us.
Anne Lamott
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Your unconscious can't work when you are breathing down its neck.
Anne Lamott