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Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Suspended
Animation
Breath
Breaths
Held
Makes
Think
Thinking
Tidiness

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.
Anne Lamott
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I've heard people say that God is the gift of desperation, and there's a lot to be said for having really reached a bottom where you've run out of any more good ideas or plans for everybody else's behavior or how to save and fix and rescue or just get out of a huge mess, possibly of your own creation.
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Frederick Buechner is one of my favorite writers. The Eyes of the Heart is beautiful and wise, full of insight, charm, and tenderness.
Anne Lamott
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But you don't always get what you want,you get what you get
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.
Anne Lamott
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You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
Anne Lamott
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When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader.
Anne Lamott
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If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there... When nothing new can get in, that's death.
Anne Lamott
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Get to know your characters as well as you can let there be something at stake, and then let the chips fall where they may.
Anne Lamott
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You are going to love some of your characters because they are you or some facet of you, and you are going to hate some of your characters for the same reason.
Anne Lamott
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The movement of grace toward gratitude brings us from the package of self-obsessed madness to a spiritual awakening.
Anne Lamott
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Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.
Anne Lamott
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I'm one of those religious people who are afraid of everything. I'm instantly worried about everything that could go wrong.
Anne Lamott
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Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.
Anne Lamott
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The clipping said forgiveness meant that God is for giving, and that we are here for giving too, and that to withold love or blessings is to be completely delusional.
Anne Lamott
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Your inside person doesn’t age. Your inside person is soul, is heart, in the eternal now, the ageless, the old, the young, all the ages you’ve ever been.
Anne Lamott
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You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself.
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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And as it turns out, if one person is praying for you, buckle up. Things can happen.
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