Quote

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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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Write
Okay
Sloppy
Live
Reader
Overly
Firsts
Cold
Draft
First
Knowing
Jackson
Writing
Start
Jump
Water
Swim
Shirley
Bigs
Confused
Antagonistic
Making
Anywhere
Detailed

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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In fact, there's really only one thing that everything's made of it's energy.
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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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Everything takes me forever. It's all lurch, flail. I hope that is good news to you writers.
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I got one of the five golden tickets to be a writer, and I take that seriously. I don't love my own work at all, but I love my own self. I love that I've been given the chance to capture the stories that come through me.
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When you make friends with fear, it can’t rule you.
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So a moral position is not a message. A moral position is a passionate caring inside you.
Anne Lamott
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My natural tendency is to complicate everything--and then to spray words and ideas onto everything afterwards. I've had to develop the habit of keeping things simple.
Anne Lamott
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... everyone has come to understand that unconditional love is a reality, but with as shelf life of about eight to ten seconds. [p. 110]
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We want a sense that an important character, like a narrator, is reliable. We want to believe that a character is not playing ages or being coy or being manipulative, but is telling the truth to the best of his or her ability...We do not wish to be crudely manipulated...We want to be massaged by a masseur, not whapped by a carpet beater.
Anne Lamott
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Where do we even start on the daily walk of restoration and awakening? We start where we are.
Anne Lamott
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Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it more or less together. They are much more like you than you would believe. So try not to compare your insides to their outsides.
Anne Lamott
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Raising a child, whether or not it is yours, is like Nautilus of the heart and soul.
Anne Lamott
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I am skittish about relationships, as most of the marriages I've seen up close have been ruinous for one or both parties.
Anne Lamott
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What if we never 'get over' certain deaths, or our childhoods? What if the idea that we should have by now, or will, is a great palace lie? What if we're not supposed to? What if it takes a life time...?
Anne Lamott
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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.
Anne Lamott
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Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.
Anne Lamott
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Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.
Anne Lamott
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I try to write the books I would love to come upon that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness - and that can make me laugh.
Anne Lamott
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Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save they just stand there shining.
Anne Lamott
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Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
Anne Lamott