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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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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Returns
Includes
Emptiness
Letting
Mess
Return
Noticing
Faith
Light
Discomfort

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In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.
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Dialogue that is written in dialect is very tiring to read. If you can do it brilliantly, fine. If other writers read your work and rave about your use of dialect, go for it. But be positive that you do it well, because otherwise it is a lot of work to read short stories or novels that are written in dialect. It makes our necks feel funny.
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My writer friends, and they are legion, do not go around beaming with quiet feelings of contentment. Most of them go around with haunted, abused, surprised looks on their faces, like lab dogs on whom very personal deodorant sprays have been tested.
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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.
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That's about 90 percent of my theological life - radical self-care. Put your own oxygen mask on first. I watch the self-talk that goes through my mind, and if I am being critical with myself, I shake myself out of it.
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Dancing almost always turns out to be a good idea.
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I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.
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Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.
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[S]he believed that the Buddhists were right–that if you want, you will suffer if you love, you will grieve. (68)
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You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.
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Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship
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I write everything as a wake-up call to myself and others, to anyone who may have gotten tired of hitting the snooze button.
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A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal.
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I get thirsty people glasses of water, even if that thirsty person is just me.
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Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.
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You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.
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My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.
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If you have a body, you are entitled to the full range of feelings. It comes with the package.
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When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader.
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