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My understanding is that you get to choose which of your thoughts to go with.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Thoughts
Choose
Understanding

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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I used to think that paired opposites were a given, that love was the opposite of hate, right the opposite of wrong. But now I think we sometimes buy into these concepts because it is so much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality. I don't think anything is the opposite of love. Reality is unforgivingly complex.
Anne Lamott
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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.
Anne Lamott
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Grief is just so scary.... If we finally begin to cry all those suppressed tears, they will surely wash us away like the Mississippi River. That's what our parents told us. We got sent to our rooms for having huge feelings. In my family, if you cried or got angry, you didn't get dinner.
Anne Lamott
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All parents are an embarrassment to their kids. Often grandparents are the relief. Kids don't have to resist you.
Anne Lamott
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When you pray, you are not starting the conversation from scratch, just remembering to plug back into a conversation that's always in progress.
Anne Lamott
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Toni Morrison said, The function of freedom is to free someone else, and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad that you did. Members of your family and other critics may wish you had kept your secrets. Oh, well, what are you going to do?
Anne Lamott
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For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are our ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food.
Anne Lamott
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My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him.
Anne Lamott
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I don't write about the intimate details of my cousins and aunts and uncles, and my mother and my father because it's not right to, for me.
Anne Lamott
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...since you can't heal your own sick mind with your own sick mind, I needed to consult somebody else's sick mind.
Anne Lamott
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I like to read away as much of the afternoon as possible, until real life rears its ugly head.
Anne Lamott
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One line of dialogue that rings true reveals character in a way that pages of description can't.
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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You are not your bank account, or your ambitiousness. You're not the cold clay lump with a big belly you leave behind when you die. You're not your collection of walking personality disorders. You are spirit, you are love.
Anne Lamott
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I woke up full of hate and fear the day before the most recent peace march in San Francisco. This was disappointing: I'd hoped to wake up feeling somewhere between Virginia Woolf and Wavy Gravy.
Anne Lamott
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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.
Anne Lamott
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Prayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. (In fact, these are probably the best possible conditions under which to pray.) Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.
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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Laughter is the key that grace has arrived.
Anne Lamott
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Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.
Anne Lamott