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Just don't pretend you know more about your characters than they do, because you don't. Stay open to them. It's teatime and all the dolls are at the table. Listen. It's that simple.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Writing
Table
Tables
Characters
Listen
Stay
Open
Simple
Dolls
Character
Pretend

More quotes by 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.
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Laughter is carbonated holiness.
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When you make friends with fear, it can’t rule you.
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I do not understand how deeply people seem to like my work - but I love that people feel I have helped them through hardships, and also have shared my experience of living a more spiritual and present life. It's so great to be able to make people laugh, because this is so often how we get our selves back.
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Getting into a new relationship is like pouring Miracle-Gro on your character defects.
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You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t.
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I think we're all pretty crazy on this bus. I'm not sure I know anyone who's got all the dots on his or her dice.
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if you want to know how God feels about money, look at whom she gives it to.
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...after a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat.
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Sam said to me the other day, I love you like 20 tyrannosauruses on 20 mountaintops, and this is the exact same way in which I love him.
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If the present is really all we have, then the present lasts forever.
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You keep working on your piece over and over, trying to get the sections and paragraphs and sentences and the whole just right, but there's a point at which you can tell you've begun hurting the work with your perfectionism. Then you have to release the work to new eyes.
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A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It's a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of truth, and then you give your heart to expressing it clearly.
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If God was giving me a ham, I'd be crazy not to receive it. Maybe it was the ham of God, who takes away the sins of the world.
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Rule 1: When all else fails, follow instructions. And Rule 2: Don't be an asshole.
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We all know we're going to die what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.
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I like to read away as much of the afternoon as possible, until real life rears its ugly head.
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A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way.
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Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life - it gave me me. It provided the time and experience and failures and triumphs and friends who helped me step into the shape that had been waiting for me all my life...I not only get along with me most of the time now, I am militantly and maternally on my own side.
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You know, we're often ashamed of asking for so much help because it seems selfish or petty or narcissistic, but I think, if there's a God -- and I believe there is -- that God is there to help. That's what God's job is.
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