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2d220f8
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Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months."
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prayer
truth
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Anne Lamott |
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74efa88
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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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madness
sanity
nuts
tribe
insanity
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Anne Lamott |
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74e1911
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The garden is one of the two great metaphors for humanity. The garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things. The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe. It's part of an urgent territorial drive that we can probably trace back to animals storing food. It's a competitive display mechanism, like having a prize bull, this greed for the best tomatoes and English tea roses. It's about winn..
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Anne Lamott |
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2121923
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So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.
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Anne Lamott |
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23d7429
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Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.
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prayer
meaning
trouble
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Anne Lamott |
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b50b409
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I guess he'll have to figure out someday that he is supposed to have this dark side, that it is part of what it means to be human, to have the darkness just as much as the light- that in fact the dark parts make the light visible; without them, the light would disappear. But I guess he has to figure other stuff out first, like how to keep his neck from flopping all over the place and how to sit up.
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Anne Lamott |
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62cc35e
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Ram Dass, who described himself as a Hin-Jew, said that ultimately we're all just walking each other home. I love that. I try to live by it.
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Anne Lamott |
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41011d8
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When we did art with the kids, the demons would lie down.
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teaching
children
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Anne Lamott |
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604f338
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I pray not to be such a whiny, self-obsessed baby, and give thanks that I am not quite as bad as I used to be (talk about miracles). Then something comes up, and I overreact and blame and sulk, and it feels like I haven't made any progress at all. But it turns out I'm less of a brat than before, and I hit the reset button much sooner, shake it off, and get my sense if humor back.
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Anne Lamott |
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63ee338
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Most humbling of all is to comprehend the lifesaving gift that your pit crew of people has been for you, and all the experiences you have shared, the journeys together, the collaborations, births and deaths, divorces, rehab, and vacations, the solidarity you have shown one another. Every so often you realize that without all of them, your life would be barren and pathetic. It would be Death of a Salesman, though with e-mail and texting.
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gratitude
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Anne Lamott |
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cc42d89
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I realized I was going to get through this disappointing service, and anyway, you have to be somewhere: better here, where I have heard truth spoken so often, than, say, at the DMV, or home alone, orbiting my own mind. And it's good to be out where others can see you, so you can't be your ghastly spoiled self. It forces you to act slightly more elegantly, and this improves your thoughts, and thereby the world.
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religion
humor
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Anne Lamott |
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eb0e6d3
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To participate requires self-discipline and trust and courage, because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, as my friend Dale puts it, How alive am I willing to be?
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Anne Lamott |
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90408d6
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Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
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Anne Lamott |
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00f09c6
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I know that sometimes these friends feel that they have been expelled from the ordinary world they lived in before and that they are now citizens of the Land of the Fucked.
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Anne Lamott |
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ee05a8a
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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.
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perfection
writing
inspirational
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Anne Lamott |
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144d687
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If we can believe in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, old Uncle Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth can destroy you." --
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Anne Lamott |
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d698632
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So does our writing matter, again?" they ask. Because of the spirit, I say. Because of the heart. 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 clappin..
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Anne Lamott |
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8190f7f
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Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right.
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writing
innocence
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Anne Lamott |
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a10cd03
|
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.
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Anne Lamott |
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3c6836e
|
Anne Lamott's priest friend Tom, how to get through:
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Anne Lamott |
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614c4a9
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For twenty years I have ached to go back home, when there was nobody there to whom I could return.
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Anne Lamott |
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edc4038
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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 pain does grow less acute, but the insidious palace lie that we will get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention the most important places we have been to. Pretending that things are nicely boxed..
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Anne Lamott |
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b66054c
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Without using the word, everyone started forgiving each other again. Just like that, from the no of all nothingness: you have a big tense mess and out of it comes some joy. It must be magic.
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Anne Lamott |
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cdab161
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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.
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Anne Lamott |
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a7b1198
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What saved me was that I found gentle, loyal and hilarious companions, which is at the heart of meaning: maybe we don't find a lot of answers to life's tougher questions, but if we find a few true friends, that's even better. They help you see who you truly are, which is not always the loveliest possible version of yourself, but then comes the greatest miracle of all--they still love you. They keep you company as perhaps you become less of ..
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Anne Lamott |
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45bf341
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If you always dreamed of writing a novel or a memoir, and you used to love to write, and were pretty good at it, will it break your heart if it turns out you never got around to it? If you wake up one day at eighty, will you feel nonchalant that something always took precedence over a daily commitment to discovering your creative spirit? If not--if this very thought fills you with regret--then what are you waiting for?
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Anne Lamott |
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66286ef
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everyone has come to understand that unconditional love is a reality, but with as shelf life of about eight to ten seconds. [p. 110]
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Anne Lamott |
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65bcfac
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Maybe it is because music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add the tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way.
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Anne Lamott |
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e1ba69c
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If you haven't already, you will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and you never completely get over the loss of a deeply beloved person. But this is also good news. The person lives forever, in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through, and you learn to dance with the banged-up heart.
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grief
loss
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Anne Lamott |
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3271f0b
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There is something so tender about this to me, about being willing to have your makeup wash off, your eyes tear up, your nose start to run. Its tender partly because it harkens back to infancy, to your mother washing your face with love and lots or water, tending to you, making you clean all over again.
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Anne Lamott |
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121edb1
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I do know the sorrow of being ordinary, and that much of our life is spent doing the crazy mental arithmetic of how, at any given moment, we might improve, or at least disguise or present our defects and screw-ups in either more charming or more intimidating ways.
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ordinary
self
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Anne Lamott |
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e82119f
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butterflies were wind energy made visible.
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Anne Lamott |
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0e29554
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What I've learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. First there's the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady, who says primly, "Well, not very interesting, is it?" And there's the emaciated German male who writes these Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes. And there are your parents, agonizing over your lack of loyalty and discretion; and there's William Burroughs, dozing off or shooting..
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Anne Lamott |
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9e7d31e
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I have these secret pangs of shame about being single, like I wasn't good enough to get a husband. Rita reminded me of something I'd told her once, about the five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston. The first rule, he says, is that you must not have anything wrong with you or anything different. The second one is that if you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible. Th..
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rules-of-life
revolution
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Anne Lamott |
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a370e0b
|
I want people who write to crash or dive below the surface, where life is so cold and confusing and hard to see. Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth.
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Anne Lamott |
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7902345
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Some people wanted to get rich or famous, but my friends and I wanted to get real. We wanted to get deep. (Also, I suppose, we wanted to get laid.)
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Anne Lamott |
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8187265
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I took notes on the people around me, in my town, in my family, in my memory. I took notes on my own state of mind, my grandiosity, the low self-esteem. I wrote down the funny stuff I overheard. I learned to be like a ship's rat, veined ears trembling, and I learned to scribble it all down.
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Anne Lamott |
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e94ac0d
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It really IS easier to experience spiritual connection when your life is in the process of coming apart.
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spirituality
|
Anne Lamott |
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bbbb22a
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I honestly think in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here? Let's think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world. The alternative is that we stultify, we shut down. Think of those times when you've read prose or poetry that is presented in such a way that you have a fleeting sense of being startled by beauty or insight, by a glimpse into someone's soul. All ..
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reverence
writing-advice
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Anne Lamott |
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8740c29
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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? Get it all down. Let it pour out of you and onto the page. Write an incredibly shitty, self-indulge..
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writing-life
writer
writing
anne-lamott
first-draft
first-drafts
bird-by-bird
writing-advice
write
writers
|
Anne Lamott |
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d68dda3
|
it speaks of such integrity to refuse to pretend that you're doing well just to help other people deal with the fact that sometimes we face an impossible loss.
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Anne Lamott |
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e151b0c
|
It is most comfortable to be invisible, to observe life from a distance, at one with our own intoxicating superior thoughts. But comfort and isolation are not where the surprises are. They are not where hope is.
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Anne Lamott |
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752f6eb
|
You should not bring more items and hurdles to the obstacle course.
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Anne Lamott |
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eaa684f
|
They always threw their arms around and hugged me while crying our Yiddish endearments. Yet none of them believed in God. They believed in social justice, good works, Israel, and Bette Midler. I was nearly thirty before I met a religious Jew.
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Anne Lamott |