Quote

The real payoff is the writing itself, that a day when you have gotten your work done is a good day, that total dedication is the point.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Good
Dedication
Gotten
Total
Point
Done
Real
Writing
Work
Payoff

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation.
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If you are hoping to find your self-worth and fulfillment in other peoples' opinion of your writing, you will never find it.
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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.
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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.
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If I have a huge audience, I'd like a bigger audience maybe slightly a slightly more illustrious audience.
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People help you or you help them and when we offer or receive help, we take in each other. And then we are saved.
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Try to write in a directly emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique. Don't be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.
Anne Lamott
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Never compare your insides to everyone else's outsides.
Anne Lamott
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I do not have deep theological understanding or opinion, but I do not read the Bible as the literal word of God.
Anne Lamott
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Novels ought to have hope at least, American novels ought to have hope. French novels don't need to. We mostly win wars, they lose them. Of course, they did hide more Jews than many other countries, and this is a form of winning.
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Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad.
Anne Lamott
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I took notes on the people around me, in my town, in my family, in my memory. I took notes on my own state of mind, my grandiosity, the low self-esteem. I wrote down the funny stuff I overheard. I learned to be like a ship's rat, veined ears trembling, and I learned to scribble it all down.
Anne Lamott
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I could become like that dyslexic agnostic in the old joke - the one who lies in bed and tries to figure out if his dog exists.
Anne Lamott
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Write as if your parents are dead.
Anne Lamott
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We were raised to believe in books, music, and nature.
Anne Lamott
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Jealousy is such a direct attack on whatever measure of confidence you’ve been able to muster. But if you continue to write, you are probably going to have to deal with it, because some wonderful, dazzling successes are going to happen for some of the most awful, angry, undeserving writers you know-people who are, in other words, not you.
Anne Lamott
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You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up when you're holding your breath. And writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like water - just as writing is also about dealing with the emptiness.
Anne Lamott
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So a moral position is not a message. A moral position is a passionate caring inside you.
Anne Lamott
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If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days--listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off. You take home all you've taken in, all that you've overheard, and you turn it into gold. (Or at least you try.)
Anne Lamott
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Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.
Anne Lamott