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d10d3d9
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For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.
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reading
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Anne Lamott |
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2a89362
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Joy is the best makeup.
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Anne Lamott |
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f6cfb55
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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, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet ar..
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writing
perfectionism
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Anne Lamott |
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d425535
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And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn't have to anymore.
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healing
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Anne Lamott |
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c289e24
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You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.
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Anne Lamott |
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4ceb42f
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Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.
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revenge
grudges
spite
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Anne Lamott |
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2f940c0
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Your problem is how you are going to spend this one 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 circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
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inspirational
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Anne Lamott |
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e4563e9
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E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.
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writing
life
inspirational
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Anne Lamott |
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a076520
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A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal.
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Anne Lamott |
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db8b69b
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You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us think..
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writer
writing
writers
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Anne Lamott |
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ca5985e
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I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.
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love
parenting
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Anne Lamott |
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db9fb6d
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Laughter is carbonated holiness.
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laughter
humor
inspirational
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Anne Lamott |
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7405eb1
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It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.
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Anne Lamott |
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6bc71e3
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You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town
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Anne Lamott |
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ea78350
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Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived...Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation... Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend. What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.
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Anne Lamott |
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a84d94f
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I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling to the need to be right.
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inspirational
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Anne Lamott |
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a90547d
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It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said 'do the best you can with these, they will have to do'. And mostly, against all odds, they do.
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life
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Anne Lamott |
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61068fd
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I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me--that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.
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Anne Lamott |
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ed27bd8
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When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.
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god
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Anne Lamott |
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4bbf979
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Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. If you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare...
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Anne Lamott |
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7a2752e
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If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act--truth is always subversive.
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writing-life
writing-advice
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Anne Lamott |
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d8034bc
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Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around m..
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time
writing
breaking-down-assignment
project-management
homework
project
time-management
encouragement
writing-advice
childhood
school
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Anne Lamott |
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91b2624
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Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation.
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Anne Lamott |
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d1c8044
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Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.
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Anne Lamott |
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c2fb194
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It turned out this man worked for the Dalai Lama. And she said gently-that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born-and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.
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inspiration
dalai-lama
buddhism
problems
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Anne Lamott |
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588eebb
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I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer. Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.
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writing
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Anne Lamott |
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d5e8369
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Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.
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prayer
spirituality
inspirational
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Anne Lamott |
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d647be2
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Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom."
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prayer
spirituality
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Anne Lamott |
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1aeba29
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The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines.
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enlightenment
humor
inspirational
road
difficulties
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Anne Lamott |
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81c29e6
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Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?
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Anne Lamott |
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7511fe4
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Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue
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Anne Lamott |
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22f78a9
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Remember that you own what happened to you. If your childhood was less than ideal, you may have been raised thinking that if you told the truth about what really went on in your family, a long bony white finger would emerge from a cloud and point to you, while a chilling voice thundered, "We *told* you not to tell." But that was then. Just put down on paper everything you can remember now about your parents and siblings and relatives and ne..
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memories
writing
advice
getting-started
memoir
remembering
childhood
incest
memory
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Anne Lamott |
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adb39e1
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Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper.
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writing
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Anne Lamott |
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5e5e218
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You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.
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kindness
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Anne Lamott |
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0fb7929
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because when people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much.
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Anne Lamott |
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78c9b00
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My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable
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Anne Lamott |
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970ddde
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Jealousy always has been my cross, the weakness and woundedness in me that has most often caused me to feel ugly and unlovable, like the Bad Seed. I've had many years of recovery and therapy, years filled with intimate and devoted friendships, yet I still struggle. I know that when someone gets a big slice of pie, it doesn't mean there's less for me. In fact, I know that there isn't even a pie, that there's plenty to go around, enough food ..
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Anne Lamott |
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6837c92
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If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.
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Anne Lamott |
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f3468dd
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But how?" my students ask. "How do you actually do it?" You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on the computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just ..
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writer
writing
file
how-to-write
imagine
focus
quiet
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Anne Lamott |
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632b993
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The problem is acceptance, which is something we're taught not to do. We're taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given- that you are not in a productive creative period- you free yourself to begin filling up again.
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writing
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Anne Lamott |
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e1b97a4
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We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.
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death
life
inspirational
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Anne Lamott |
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c395750
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There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, "Why on our hearts, and not in them?" The rabbi answered, "Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your heart, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside."
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christianity
judaism
scripture
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Anne Lamott |
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426dfa7
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It is unearned love--the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It's the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. 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 ..
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Anne Lamott |
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bd56672
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I've given guys blow jobs just because I've run out of things to talk about.' Oh, Rae. Who hasn't
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sex
oral-sex
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Anne Lamott |