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becc7c8
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But it is fantasy to think that successful writers do not have these bored, defeated hours, these hours of deep insecurity when one feels as small and jumpy as a water bug. They do. But they also often feel a great sense of amazement that they get to write, and they know that this is what they want to do for the rest of their lives.
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Anne Lamott |
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44a66f1
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I decided to go to the beach at San Quentin, and practice living as if today was one of the precious few left to me. What a concept.
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Anne Lamott |
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d759334
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For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous.
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Anne Lamott |
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3e99c13
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This one truth, that the few people you adore will die, is plenty difficult to absorb. But on top of it, someone's brakes fail, or someone pulls the trigger or snatches the kid, or someone deeply trusted succumbs to temptation, and everything falls apart. We are hurt beyond any reasonable chance of healing. We are haunted by our failures and mortality. And yet the world keeps on spinning, and in our grief, rage, and fear a few people keep o..
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Anne Lamott |
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ae74fa4
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Redefinition is a nightmare--we think we've arrived, in our nice Pottery Barn boxes, and that this or that is true. Then something happens that totally sucks, and we are in a new box, and it is like changing into clothes that don't fit, that we hate. Yet the essence remains. Essence is malleable, fluid. Everything we lose is Buddhist truth--one more thing that you don't have to grab with your death grip, and protect from theft or decay. It'..
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Anne Lamott |
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69f715a
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We, too, are shadow and light. We are not supposed to know this, or be all these different facets of humanity, bright and dark. We are raised to be bright and shiny, but there is meaning in the acceptance of our dusky and dappled side, and also in defiance.
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Anne Lamott |
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d36420a
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You can't find your true voice and peer behind the door and report honestly and clearly to us if your parents are reading over your shoulder. They are probably the ones who told you not to open that door in the first place. You can tell if you they're there because a small voice will say, 'Oh, whoops, don't say that, that's a secret,' or 'That's a bad work,' or 'Don't tell anyone you jack off. They'll all start doing it.' So you have to bre..
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Anne Lamott |
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dd637f9
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It was never meant to be permanent. You must have known the tide would come back in.
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Anne Lamott |
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be1fe0f
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This family business can be so stressful - difficult, damaged people showing up t spend time with other difficult, damanged people
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Anne Lamott |
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4d40fdd
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I knew to put on my favorite earrings. Sometimes you start with the outside and you get it right. You tend to your spirit through the body.
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Anne Lamott |
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a67783e
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One rarely knows where to begin the search for meaning, though by necessity, we can only start where we are.
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Anne Lamott |
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213c2e2
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Sometimes love does not look like what you had in mind.
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Anne Lamott |
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5aeca37
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Usually if you pray from the heart, you get an answer--the phone rings or the mail comes, and light gets in through the cracks, so you can see the next right thing to do. That's all you need.
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light
heart
crack
mail
phone
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Anne Lamott |
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c6c245f
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One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. Another secret is that laughter is carbonated holiness.
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laughter
secret
life
tribe
holiness
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Anne Lamott |
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0fd6908
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Life is not a submarine.
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Anne Lamott |
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bd8c796
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by the great Persian mystical poet Rumi: "Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure."
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Anne Lamott |
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22f5e40
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if you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.
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writing
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Anne Lamott |
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819efb0
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How alive am I willing to be?
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living
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Anne Lamott |
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d3a702b
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good news is that we're all doomed, and you can give up any sense of control. Resistance is futile. Many things are going to get worse and weaker, especially democracy and the muscles in your upper arms. Most deteriorating conditions, though, will have to do with your family, the family in which you were raised and your current one. A number of the best people will have died, badly, while the worst thrive. The younger middle-aged people str..
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Anne Lamott |
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7be186d
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Anything that leaves you more fearful, more isolated, more disconnected from other people, more full of judgment or self-hatred, is not of God, does not follow the Rule of Love--and you should stop doing it.
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Anne Lamott |
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3bb843e
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Throughout my childhood I believed that what I thought about was different from what other kids thought about. It was not necessarily more profound, but there was a struggle going on inside me to find some sort of creative or spiritual or aesthetic way of seeing the world and organizing it in my head.
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thoughts
writing
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Anne Lamott |
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aa4da85
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Additionally, I have spent approximately 1,736 hours of this one precious life waiting for the man to finish and pretending that felt good. And I want a refund.
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Anne Lamott |
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bc396ae
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She said that sometimes she uses a formula when writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending.
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Anne Lamott |
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dbb297d
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Imagining God can be so different from wishful thinking, if your spiritual experiences change your behavior over time. Have you become more generous, which is the ultimate healing? Or more patient, which is a close second? Did your world become bigger and juicier and more tender? Have you become ever so slightly kinder to yourself? This is how you tell.
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Anne Lamott |
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fd0a8a4
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You can change the world with a hot bath, if you sink into it from a place of knowing that you are worth profound care, even when you're dirty and rattled. Who knew?
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Anne Lamott |
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3615b26
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More than any other sentence I have ever come across, I love Ram Dass's line that when all is said and done, we are all just walking each other home.
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Anne Lamott |
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188665d
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When you love something like reading--or drawing or music or nature--it surrounds you with a sense of connection to something great. If you are lucky enough to know this, then your search for meaning involves whatever that Something is. It's an alchemical blend of affinity and focus that takes us to a place within that feels as close as we ever get to "home." It's like pulling into our own train station after a long trip--joy, relief, a ple..
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Anne Lamott |
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8db806d
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And then, unbidden, seemingly out of nowhere, a thought or image arrives. Some will float into your head like goldfish, lovely, bright, orange, and weightless, and you follow them like a child at an aquarium that was thought to be without fish. Others will step of the shadows like Boo Radley and make you catch your breath or take a step backward. They're often so rich, these unbidden thoughts, and so clear that they feel indelible. But I sa..
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writer
writing
authoring
book-ideas
getting-an-idea
writing-ideas
write
idea
ideas
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Anne Lamott |
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33a3255
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Being human can be so dispiriting. It is a real stretch for me a lot of the time.
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Anne Lamott |
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089b62b
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If you're not enough before the gold medal, you won't be enough with it.
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Anne Lamott |
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f2a493a
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Kids are hard -they drive you crazy and break your heart- whereas grandchildren make you feel great about life, and yourself, and your ability to love someone unconditionally, finally, after all these years.
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motherhood
kids
grandparents
grandmother
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Anne Lamott |
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a24cdfe
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They say we are punished not for the sin but by the sin, and I began to feel punished by my unwillingness to forgive.
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Anne Lamott |
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7e13d80
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Yet union with a partner--someone with whom to wake, whom you love, and talk with on and off all day, and sit with at dinner, and watch TV and movies with, and read together in bed with, and do hard tasks with, and are loved by. That sounds really lovely.
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Anne Lamott |
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e947f30
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My mind kept thinking its harsh thinky thoughts, but I would distract myself from them gently and say, 'Those are not the truth, those are not trustworthy, those are for entertainment purposes only.' Eventually I had quieter thoughts.
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Anne Lamott |
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7af6312
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I felt changed and a little crazy. But though I was still like a stained and slightly buckled jigsaw puzzle with some pieces missing, now there were at least a few border pieces in place.
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Anne Lamott |
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8e1aad3
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Help for the sick and hungry, home for the homeless folk, peace in the world forever, this is my prayer, O Lord. Amen.
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Anne Lamott |
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e1fc296
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Every Sunday I nudge Sam in her direction, and he walks to where she is sitting and hugs her. She smells him behind the ears, where he most smells like sweet unwashed new potatoes. This is in fact what I think God may smell like, a young child's slightly dirty neck.
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god
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Anne Lamott |
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5601c90
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I also tell them that sometimes when my writer friends are working, they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time. And sometimes when they are writing well, they feel that they are living up to something. It is as if the right words, the true words, are already inside them, and they just want to help them get out.
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Anne Lamott |
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cd9d28d
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The physical body is acknowledged as dust, the personal drama as delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, that whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin.
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Anne Lamott |
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cee2d84
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The review in the newspaper the next day was not very good. But by then I'd figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it's the gift of feeling floppier. One of the things I'd been most afraid of had finally happened, with a whole lot of people watching, and it had indeed been a nightmare. But sitting with all that vulnerability, I discovered I coul..
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Anne Lamott |
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8199d9e
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But what if the great secret insider-trading truth is that you don't ever get over the biggest losses in your life? Is that good news, bad news, or both? The good news is that if you don't seal up your heart with caulking compound, and instead stay permeable, people stay alive inside you, and maybe outside you, too, forever. This is also the bad news, not because your heart will continue to hurt forever, but because grief is so frowned upon..
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Anne Lamott |
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ff7f4b5
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only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it.
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Anne Lamott |
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37615ee
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We can pray for a shot at having a life in which we are present and awake and paying attention and being kind to ourselves. We can pray, "Hello? Is there anyone there?" We can pray, "Am I too far gone, or can you help me get out of my isolated self-obsession?" We can say anything to God. It's all prayer."
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Anne Lamott |
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e421e2f
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I'm pretty sure that it is only by experiencing that ocean of sadness in a naked and immediate way that we come to be healed--which is to say, that we come to experience life with a real sense of presence and spaciousness and peace.
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Anne Lamott |