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My best teachers were mess, failure, death, mistakes, and the people I hated, including myself.

Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 10
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Mistake
Death
Teachers
Best
Hated
People
Mess
Mistakes
Including
Failure
Teacher

More quotes by Anne Lamott

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Laughter is carbonated holiness.
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In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.
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There is nothing as sweet as a comeback, when you are down and out, about to lose, and out of time.
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I don't see myself as a deep philosopher. The things I write about tend to be what we all have to face, or consider, or experience, that I talk about with my friends and brothers. It's universal stuff, told in my own voice, my own details and truth, which is all I have to offer.
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Mothers are supposed to listen and, afterward, to respond with some wisdom and perspective, but these things were not my mother's strong suit.
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If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.
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Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another.
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E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.
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I cry intermittently, like a summer rain. I don't feel racked by the crying in fact, it hydrates me. Then rage wells up in me, and I want to take a crowbar to all the cars in the neighborhood.
Anne Lamott
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A big heart is both a clunky and a delicate thing it doesn't protect itself and it doesn't hide. It stands out, like a baby's fontanel, where you can see the soul pulse through.
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Toni Morrison said, The function of freedom is to free someone else, and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad that you did. Members of your family and other critics may wish you had kept your secrets. Oh, well, what are you going to do?
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Publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is.
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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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If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days--listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off. You take home all you've taken in, all that you've overheard, and you turn it into gold. (Or at least you try.)
Anne Lamott
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I loved every second of Catholic church. I loved the sickly sweet rotting-pomegranate smells of the incense. I loved the overwrought altar, the birdbath of holy water, the votive candles I loved that there was a poor box, the stations of the cross rendered in stained glass on the windows.
Anne Lamott
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I'd wanted to be a writer my whole life. But when I finally made it, I felt like a greyhound catching the mechanical rabbit she'd been chasing for so long--discovering it was merely metal, wrapped in cloth. It wasn't alive it had no spirit. It was fake.
Anne Lamott
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I devoured books like a person taking vitamins, afraid that otherwise I would remain this gelatinous narcissist, with no possibility of ever becoming thoughtful, of ever being taken seriously.
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.
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There is a door we all want to walk through and writing can help you find it and open it.
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For too long, and despite what people told me, I had fallen for what the culture said about beauty, youth, features, heights, weights, hair textures, upper arms.
Anne Lamott