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The reason 'help' is such a great prayer is that God is the gift of desperation. When you're in despair, you're teachable.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Desperation
Despair
Gift
Prayer
Help
Helping
Reason
Great
Teachable

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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I write everything as a wake-up call to myself and others, to anyone who may have gotten tired of hitting the snooze button.
Anne Lamott
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I never had a particularly strong craving to procreate, except for earlier fantasies of wanting to be Marmee in Little Women.
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People help you or you help them and when we offer or receive help, we take in each other. And then we are saved.
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The whistle is always waiting to be blown, and in some ways, it gets me to do better work.
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If we can believe in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, old Uncle Jesus said, If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth can destroy you.
Anne Lamott
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[Her] work taught me that you could be all the traditional feminine things -- a mother, a lover, a listener, a nurturer -- and you could also be critically astute and radical and have a minority opinion that was profoundly moral.
Anne Lamott
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If you fixate on the big picture, the whole shebang, the overview, you miss the stitching.
Anne Lamott
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If you have a body, you are entitled to the full range of feelings. It comes with the package.
Anne Lamott
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I can never tell what I'm doing when I'm in the middle of publication because I have no confidence. I have terrible self-esteem, along with boundless narcissism.
Anne Lamott
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Sometimes it feels like God has reached down and touched me, blessed me a thousand times over, and sometimes it all feels like a mean joke, like God's advisers are Muammar Qaddafi and Phyllis Schlafly.
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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.
Anne Lamott
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I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.
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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Anything you say from your heart to God is a prayer. But why is rarely a useful question. When Job keeps asking God why he has had such loss and suffering, God says, You wouldn't understand. I always want to know why, and I almost never have a good answer.
Anne Lamott
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I go to church every Sunday, which is like going to the gas station once a week and really, really filling up.
Anne Lamott
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All criticism hurts me. I'm so in the wrong business.
Anne Lamott
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Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.
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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I don't have any romantic views of parenting. Every step of the way it's really hard. It's a dangerous world, physically and psychologically.
Anne Lamott
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Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend.
Anne Lamott