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d46a0c2
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I am positive of only a few things in life, and one is that if you want to have a decent middle and old age, you have to get exercise almost every day.
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life
day
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Anne Lamott |
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cda8f7b
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We think we're humans having spiritual experiences, but we're really spirits having human experiences,
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Anne Lamott |
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c75d0fc
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When you're kind to people, and you pay attention, you make a field of comfort around them, and you get it back--the Golden Rule meets the Law of Karma meets Murphy's Law.
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people
comfort
law-of-karma
murphy-s-law
golden-rule
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Anne Lamott |
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f6a4645
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First find a path, and a little light to see by. Then push up your sleeves and start helping.
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sleeve
path
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Anne Lamott |
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c2e4244
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There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk.
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writer
writing
bird-by-bird
the-writing-process
writing-help
writing-advice
write
on-writing
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Anne Lamott |
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efc8df7
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Forgiving people doesn't necessarily mean you want to meet them for lunch. It means you try to undo the Velcro hook. Lewis Smedes said it best: "To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you."
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Anne Lamott |
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c1c8c1a
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In the face of everything, we slowly come through.
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Anne Lamott |
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0345ffd
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Pretending that things are nicely boxed up and put away robs us of great riches.
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Anne Lamott |
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bc319a7
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To heal, it seems we have to stand in the middle of the horror, at the foot of the cross, and wait out another's suffering where that person can see us.
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Anne Lamott |
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bef8b2a
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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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335cf13
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But as Rumi said, "Through love all pain will turn to medicine," not most pain, or for other people; and the pain and failures grew me, helped slowly restore me to the person I was born to be. I had to learn that life was not going to be filling if I tried to scrunch myself into somebody else's idea of me, i.e., someone sophisticated enough to prefer dark chocolate. I like milk chocolate, like M&M's: so sue me. But I no longer have to stuff..
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Anne Lamott |
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c62aa6a
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E. L. Doctorow 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 about writing, or life, I have ever heard."
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Anne Lamott |
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da6811e
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Nothing can be delicious when you are holding your breath. For something to be delicious, you have to be present to savor it, and presence is in attention and in the flow of breath. It begins in the mouth, my parents' preferred site of comfort, and then it connects our heads to our bodies through our throats, and into our lungs and tummies, a beautiful connective cord of air.
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Anne Lamott |
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7d43e4d
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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 about writing, or life, I have ever heard."
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Anne Lamott |
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d073bc5
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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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Anne Lamott |
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91b730e
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telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be about as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat. Some
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Anne Lamott |
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2494c01
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What finally helped was an image from a medieval monk, Brother Lawrence, who saw all of us as trees in winter, with little to give, stripped of leaves and color and growth, whom God loves unconditionally anyway. My priest friend Margaret, who works with the aged and who shared this image with me, wanted me to see that even though these old people are no longer useful in any traditional meaning of the word, they are there to be loved uncondi..
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Anne Lamott |
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3c1c816
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if you want to know how God feels about money, look at whom she gives it to.
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Anne Lamott |
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5644a48
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Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do--the actual act of writing--turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.
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Anne Lamott |
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50ed0ab
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publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is.
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Anne Lamott |
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5cb2663
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whenever the world throws rose petals at you, which thrill and seduce the ego, beware. The cosmic banana peel is suddenly going to appear underfoot to make sure you don't take it all too seriously, that you don't fill up on junk food.
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Anne Lamott |
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3f50cfb
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What if you wake up some day, and you're 65... and you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life?
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perfectionism
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Anne Lamott |
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cc230a7
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you begin to notice all the props surrounding these people, and you begin to understand how props define us and comfort us, and show us what we value and what we need, and who we think we are.
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Anne Lamott |
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403c444
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I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.
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Anne Lamott |
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ec888f1
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Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong.
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Anne Lamott |
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aa39900
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In many spiritual and wisdom paths, it is written that God created us to have company and to be God's loving eyes and hands on earth. But in certain African Christian catechisms it says that God created us because He thought we would like it.
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Anne Lamott |
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4979ee2
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The basic formula for drama is setup, buildup, payoff--just like a joke. The
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Anne Lamott |
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9a429f8
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I love to be, and so often am, right.
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Anne Lamott |
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0a4a197
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You weren't born a person of cringe and contraction. You were born as energy, as life, made of the same stuff as stars, blossoms, breezes. You learned contraction to survive, but that was then. You have paid through the nose - paid but good. It is now your turn to reap.
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Anne Lamott |
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5ca3a59
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Look at us," he said. His speech was difficult to understand, thick and slow as a warped record. His two friends in the picture had Down's syndrome. All three of them looked extremely pleased with themselves. I admired the picture and then handed it back to him. He stopped, so I stopped, too. He pointed to his own image. "That," he said, "is one cool man."
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Anne Lamott |
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5d7d86e
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I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing.
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Anne Lamott |
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27b45eb
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must have been a book--way down there in the slush pile of manuscripts--that somehow slipped out of the final draft of the Bible. That would have been the chapter that dealt with how we're supposed to recover from the criticism session in the Garden, and discover a sense that we're still welcome on the planet. There are moments in Scripture when we hear that God delights in people, and I am incredulous. But they are few and far between. Per..
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Anne Lamott |
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b1e65ec
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Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like ..
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words
literature
reading
writing
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Anne Lamott |
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7aa5344
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Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up.
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Anne Lamott |
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c200f79
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Nah. But on the first day of class, when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew these people weren't fooling around.' " Lank"
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Anne Lamott |
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37d9d6e
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Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can.
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Anne Lamott |
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30c4b17
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Tom said either you learn to live with paradox and ambiguity or you'll be 6 years old for the rest of your life.
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Anne Lamott |
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9572f52
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I picked up a book on gardens, so I could study flowers and trees and vines in that way, and honest to God, people who read my novel believed that I loved to garden. Sometimes in fact they would start talking shop with me, thinking we could jam away, as gardeners are wont to do, until I let them know that I had only been winging it, with a lot of help from people around me, people who knew a lot more about gardens than I, friends who would ..
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Anne Lamott |
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5cdeae0
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I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good enough at it, and I don't think you have time to waste on someone who does not respond to you with kindness and respect.
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Anne Lamott |
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735a604
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Let's not get bogged down on whom or what we pray to. let's just say prayer is a communication from our hearts to the great mystery, or Goodness, or Howard; to the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in; to something unimaginably big, and not us. we could call this force Not Me, and Not Preachers Onstage with a Choir of 800. or for convenience we could just say "God"."
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Anne Lamott |
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435258a
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For somebody to be on a search means he or she is involved with these subversive topics, reading and comparing notes with allies, asking questions, daydreaming, brooding. Even though you have homework to do.
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Anne Lamott |
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181190e
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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. When I am reading a book like this, I feel rich and profoundly relieved to be in the presence of someone who will share the truth with me, and throw the lights on a little, and I try to write these kinds of books. Books, for me, are medicine.
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Anne Lamott |
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dbe04e1
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Just take it bird by bird
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Anne Lamott |
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0ed60fc
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I tried to cooperate with grace, which is to say, I did not turn on the TV.
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Anne Lamott |