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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
Tables
Characters
Listen
Stay
Open
Simple
Dolls
Character
Pretend
Writing
Table

More quotes by 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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Some people have a thick skin and you don’t. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pain, but that is an appropriate response to this world. The cost is high, but the blessing of being compassionate is beyond your wildest dreams.
Anne Lamott
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You are going to have to give and give and give, or there's no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.
Anne Lamott
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When we're dealing with the people in our family - no matter how annoying or gross they may be, no matter how self-inflicted their suffering may appear, no matter how afflicted they are with ignorance, prejudice or nose hairs - we give from the deepest parts of ourselves.
Anne Lamott
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Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors.
Anne Lamott
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The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.
Anne Lamott
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I think that is why we stay close to our families, no matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or dull- because when people have seen you at your worst, you don’t have to put on the mask as much.
Anne Lamott
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My best teachers were mess, failure, death, mistakes, and the people I hated, including myself.
Anne Lamott
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Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting.
Anne Lamott
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Write regularly, whether you feel like writing or not, and whether you think what you're writing is any good or not.
Anne Lamott
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Feeding a baby is like filling a hole with putty - you get it in and then you sort of shave off all the excess around the hole and get it back in, like you're spackling.
Anne Lamott
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I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.
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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I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from.
Anne Lamott
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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.
Anne Lamott
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But easy's like, who cares? Easy's like, how much is easy going to get you?
Anne Lamott
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Anne Lamott’s priest friend Tom, how to get through: Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe, he said. Right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe. Salon April 25, 2003
Anne Lamott
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What if you wake up some day, and you're 65... and you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life?
Anne Lamott
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The evidence is in, and you are the verdict.
Anne Lamott
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We're out there somewhere between the known and the unknown, trying to reel in both for a closer look.
Anne Lamott