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This is our goal as writers, I think to help others have this sense of--please forgive me--wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Thinking
Goal
Forgive
World
Help
Forgiving
Sense
Writers
Helping
Please
Bordered
Others
Wonder
Anew
Writing
Seeing
Guard
Things
Small
Worlds
Think
Break
Catch

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force (these are words we are allowed to use in California).
Anne Lamott
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When we agree to being part of something bigger than our own wired, fixated minds, we are saved.
Anne Lamott
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Your unconscious can't work when you are breathing down its neck.
Anne Lamott
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Anything you say from your heart to God is a prayer.
Anne Lamott
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The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. 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 they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.
Anne Lamott
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Some people wanted to get rich or famous, but my friends and I wanted to get real. We wanted to get deep. (Also, I suppose, we wanted to get laid.)
Anne Lamott
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I don't know much, but I understand how entirely doomed I am without God.
Anne Lamott
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Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, I hate you, God. That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.
Anne Lamott
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Most marriages are a mess, and the children get caught between two bitter, antagonistic parents. My parents stayed married for 27 unhappy years, till their kids were grown, and this was a catastrophe for us.
Anne Lamott
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But it was the singing that pulled me in and split me wide open.
Anne Lamott
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...[T]here should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.
Anne Lamott
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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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Looking back on the God my friend believed in, he seems a little erratic, not entirely unlike her father - God as borderline personality.
Anne Lamott
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You have to be a warrior and say, Maybe it's everyone else's system, but it's not mine. (from her recent interview here, on Goodreads)
Anne Lamott
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Now she and I sit together in her room and eat chocolate, and I tell her that in a very long time when we both to go heaven, we should try to get chairs next to each other, close to the dessert table.
Anne Lamott
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You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town
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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Frequently, as so many poets and psalmists and songwriters have said, the invisible shift happens through the broken places.
Anne Lamott
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The problem is acceptance, which is something we're taught not to do. We're taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given- that you are not in a productive creative period- you free yourself to begin filling up again.
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