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Very few writers really know what they are doing until they have done it.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Writers
Done
Really

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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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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Left to my own devices, my first inclination is to mess in other people's lives. I secretly believe my whole family, and really the whole world, is my responsibility.
Anne Lamott
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I’ve heard it said that every day you need half an hour of quiet time for yourself, or your Self, unless you’re incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour. I promise you, it is there. Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.
Anne Lamott
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You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.
Anne Lamott
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The difference between a writer who toughs it out and one who doesn't is that you push through the parts where you know that you've just written seven pages when all you're looking for is one paragraph.
Anne Lamott
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Living on Earth has always been a dangerous way to spend your time.
Anne Lamott
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I think drugs are part of the magical possibilities of youth and I wouldn't be here if I had continued with it.
Anne Lamott
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I wish I had thrown out the bathroom scale at age 16. Weighing yourself every morning is like waking up and asking Dick Cheney to validate your sense of inner worth.
Anne Lamott
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I kept asking God for help, and after a while I realized something -- that Josh was not enjoying this either. He was just trying to take care of himself, and I made the radical decision to let him off the hook.
Anne Lamott
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We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little.
Anne Lamott
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Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.
Anne Lamott
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Shirley Jackson said that a confused reader is an antagonistic reader, and I live by that. It's okay to start anywhere, and to let yourself write a big sloppy overly-detailed first draft. You just jump in, knowing that the water will be cold at first, but no one is making you swim.
Anne Lamott
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Everything was coming together by coming apart . . . It is the most difficult Zen practice to leave people to their destiny, even though it's painful - just loving them, and breathing with them, and distracting them in a sweet way, and laughing with them . . . if something was not my problem, I probably did not have the solution.
Anne Lamott
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I understood that the man I was calling for could never ever come back. Because I understood that the man that I was calling for was dead.
Anne Lamott
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Dogs are the closest we come to knowing the divine love of God on this side of eternity.
Anne Lamott
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Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Anne Lamott
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The last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape. It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling-and it washed over me.
Anne Lamott
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Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.
Anne Lamott
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You can either practice being right or practice being kind.
Anne Lamott
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Evangelical Christians and I can sit down and talk one on one about how much we love Jesus, and yet I'm not carried in Christian bookstores.
Anne Lamott