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Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Much
Jobs
Snappy
Make
Sense
Explanation
Human
Message
Humans
Privilege
Book
Messages
Come
Health
Hard
Suffering
Even
Lives

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen.
Anne Lamott
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Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another.
Anne Lamott
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These are pictures of the people in my family where we look like the most awkward and desperate folk you ever saw, poster children for the human condition.
Anne Lamott
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The evidence is in, and you are the verdict.
Anne Lamott
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There is nothing more touching to me then a family picture where everyone is trying to look his or her best, but you can see what a mess they all really are.
Anne Lamott
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[Her] work taught me that you could be all the traditional feminine things -- a mother, a lover, a listener, a nurturer -- and you could also be critically astute and radical and have a minority opinion that was profoundly moral.
Anne Lamott
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I do believe that God is with us even when we're at our craziest and that this goodness guides, provides, and protects.
Anne Lamott
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I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and help save the world.
Anne Lamott
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... everyone has come to understand that unconditional love is a reality, but with as shelf life of about eight to ten seconds. [p. 110]
Anne Lamott
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I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother, and partly because of the extraordinary love of her best friends, and my own best friends' mothers, and from surrogates, many of whom were not women at all but gay men. I have loved them my entire life, even after their passing.
Anne Lamott
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One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.
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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I never had a particularly strong craving to procreate, except for earlier fantasies of wanting to be Marmee in Little Women.
Anne Lamott
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Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.
Anne Lamott
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My experience as a writer is that you really do write seven and eight pages to find the paragraph you were after all along.
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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Some people may have thought that this book was too personal, too confessional. But what these people think about me is none of my business.
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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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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The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.
Anne Lamott