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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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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Character
Reveals
Way
Description
Rings
Dialogue
Pages
Line
Lines
True

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as you hear them, as they come to you. You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist.
Anne Lamott
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Being a parent is absolutely exhausting and draining, along with all the joy and love.
Anne Lamott
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Any plot you impose on your characters will be onomatopoetic: PLOT. I say don't worry about plot. Worry about the characters. Let what they say or do reveal who they are, and be involved in their lives, and keep asking yourself, Now what happens? The development of relationship creates plot.
Anne Lamott
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I have been somebody who has not written a great deal about the truth of my family's life.
Anne Lamott
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So how on earth can I bring a child into the world, knowing that such sorrow lies ahead, that it is such a large part of what it means to be human? I'm not sure. That's my answer: I'm not sure.
Anne Lamott
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Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.
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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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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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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...because when people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much.
Anne Lamott
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Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere... You don't have to dress up, for instance, and you can't hear them boo you right away.
Anne Lamott
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Laughter is the key that grace has arrived.
Anne Lamott
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What fills us is real, sweet, dopey, funny life.
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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For me, Jesus is my cleft in the rock. He is my safest friend, my safe totally loving accepting big brother.
Anne Lamott
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This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds.
Anne Lamott
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You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. ... Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.
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.
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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Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save they just stand there shining.
Anne Lamott