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68a64d4
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that grace is having a commitment to - or at least an acceptance of - being ineffective and foolish.
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Anne Lamott |
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6a84f93
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What you're looking for is already inside you. You've heard this before, but the holy thing inside you really is that which causes you to seek it. You can't buy it, lease it, rent it, date it, or apply for it. The best job in the world can't give it to you. Neither can succes, or fame, or financial security - besides which, there ain't no such thing.
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spirit
seeking
strive
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Anne Lamott |
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082e3c1
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You have to keep taking the next necessary stitch, and the next one, and the next. Without stitches, you just have rags. And we are not rags.
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Anne Lamott |
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cf8ecc8
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All good writers write [terrible first drafts.] This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. . . I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think th..
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writing-life
writing-craft
writing-process
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Anne Lamott |
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76978dd
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Toddlers can make you feel as if you have violated some archaic law in their personal Koran and you should die, infidel.
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Anne Lamott |
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2ee444c
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Nell's husband has short-man syndrome. Eddie is one of those deadly dull people who is so upbeat that I suspect he would subconsciously like to go through the neighborhood, house by house, with a machine gun. He seems oblivious to the effect that his long, rambling monologues have on people - he doesn't notice the blank faces, the fingers flexing like those of people buried alive, the ocular tics. You could write down his words verbatim, sh..
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Anne Lamott |
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9800f48
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Intelligence, goodness, humanity, excitement, serenity. Over time, these are the things that change the musculature of your face, as do laughter, and animation, and especially whatever peace you can broker with the person inside. It's furrow, pinch, and judgement that make us look older - our mothers were right. They said that if you made certain faces, they would stick, and they do. But our mothers forgot that faces of kindness and integri..
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beauty
feature
older
faces
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Anne Lamott |
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bb26305
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Everything slows down when we listen and stop trying to fix the unfixable.
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Anne Lamott |
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b5f3b88
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My favorite moment in Jeanne Moreau's latest movie--a comedy called --takes place in a kitchen, when she proclaims that every human has something to cry about. When mocked by the owner of the kitchen and pressed to say what it is that we have to cry about, she tosses back her head of flaming red hair and says, "The winds of solitude roaring at the edge of infinity."
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Anne Lamott |
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91c3c53
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These two things are almost all I want, but unfortunately, neither one is my strong suit. I am very strong on blame, and wish this were one of God's values, but trust, surrender? Letting go, forgiveness? Maybe just after a period of prayer, but then when the mood passes and real life rears its ugly head again? Not so much. I hate this, the fact that life is usually Chutes and Ladders, with no guaranteed gains. I cannot will myself into havi..
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happy
prayer
letting-go
trust
forgiveness
surrender
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Anne Lamott |
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46d30c9
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Here are the two best prayers I know: "Help me help me, help me," and "Thank you, thank you, thank you." --
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Anne Lamott |
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ad99880
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Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world's worst roommate, like having Janis Joplin with a bad hangover and PMS come to stay with you.
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Anne Lamott |
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84c17c1
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Most people's intuitions are drowned out by folk sayings. We have a moment of real feeling or insight, and then we come up with a folk saying that captures the insight in a kind of wash. The intuition may be real and ripe, fresh with possibilities, but the folk saying is guaranteed to be a cliche, stale and self-contained.
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Anne Lamott |
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7c371c6
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I'll live as well, as deeply, as madly as I can--until I die.
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living
living-life
living-well
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Anne Lamott |
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d54b74c
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Becoming a better writer is going to help you become a better reader, and is the real payoff.
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Anne Lamott |
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19c0a08
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Everything was coming together by coming apart . . . It is the most difficult Zen practice to leave people to their destiny, even though it's painful - just loving them, and breathing with them, and distracting them in a sweet way, and laughing with them . . . if something was not my problem, I probably did not have the solution.
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Anne Lamott |
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66f7f2e
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Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we're invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence.
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Anne Lamott |
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75983ce
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Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.
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Anne Lamott |
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5281ba8
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and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear...
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Anne Lamott |
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9d2aed7
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And that almost everyone was struggling to wake up, to be loved, and not feel so afraid all the time. That's what the cars, degrees, booze, and drugs were about.
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Anne Lamott |
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c35b056
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These are pictures of the people in my family where we look like the most awkward and desperate folk you ever saw, poster children for the human condition.
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Anne Lamott |
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c944ef3
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The clipping said forgiveness meant that God is for giving, and that we are here for giving too, and that to withold love or blessings is to be completely delusional.
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Anne Lamott |
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f81b237
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You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. You need to trust yourself, especially on a first draft, where amid the anxiety and self-doubt, there should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.
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dance
writing
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Anne Lamott |
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f95fb9c
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We're all afraid of the same stuff. Mostly we're afraid that we're secretly not okay, that we're disgusting, or frauds, or about to be diagnosed with cancer. ... We want to teach you how to quiet the yammer ... how you can create comfort, inside and outside, how you can get warm, how you can feed yourself. And even learn to get through silence. ... There is a wilderness inside you, and a banquet. Both. [p. 253]
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Anne Lamott |
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636501a
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When what we see catches us off guard, and when we write it as realistically and openly as possible, it offers hope. You look around and say, Wow, there's that same mockingbird; there's that woman in the red hat again. The woman in the red hat is about hope because she's in it up to her neck, too, yet every day she puts on that crazy red hat and walks to town.
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Anne Lamott |
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d601f4f
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Mostly things are not that way, that simple and pure, with so much focus given to each syllable of life as life sings itself. But that kind of attention is the prize. To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass--seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one.
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Anne Lamott |
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3bf34b9
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But you don't always get what you want;,you get what you get
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want
life
get
wish
desire
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Anne Lamott |
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97eb135
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one of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people. [p. 65]
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Anne Lamott |
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b2846fc
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Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.
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Anne Lamott |
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f61001d
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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.
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Anne Lamott |
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8432448
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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. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.
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light
faith
opposite
emptiness
mess
sense
walk
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Anne Lamott |
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c2466ed
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When we think we can do it all ourselves--fix, save, buy, or date a nice solution--it's hopeless. We're going to screw things up. We're going to get our tentacles wrapped around things and squirt our squiddy ink all over, so that there is even less visibility, and then we're going to squeeze the very life out of everything.
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Anne Lamott |
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f440c23
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It's incredibly touching when someone who seems so hopeless finds a few inches of light to stand in and makes everything work as well as possible. All of us lurch and fall, sit in the dirt, are helped to our feet, keep moving, feel like idiots, lose our balance, gain it, help others get back on their feet, and keep going.
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positivity
help
hopeless
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Anne Lamott |
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447d1c5
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When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are.
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writing-life
life-quotes
life-lessons
fear-quote
fearless-quotes
writing-philosophy
writing-advice
life-philosophy
fears
monster
monsters
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Anne Lamott |
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1c3095c
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You've got to learn to let go and let your children fall, and fail. If you try to protect them from hurt, and always rush to their side with Band-Aids, they won't learn about life, and what is true, what works, what helps, and what are real consequences of certain kinds of behavior. When they do get hurt, which they will, they won't know how to take care of their grown selves. They won't even know where the aspirin is kept.
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Anne Lamott |
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db088c0
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What's the difference between you and God? God never thinks he's you.
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Anne Lamott |
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635927d
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I was terrified of death by the time I was three or four, actively if not lucidly. I had frequent nightmares about snakes and scary neighbors. By the age of four or five, I was terrified by my thoughts. By the time I was five, the migraines began. I was so sensitive about myself and the world that I cried or shriveled up at the slightest hurt. People always told me, "You've got to get a thicker skin," like now they might say, jovially, "Let..
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sensitivity
worry
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Anne Lamott |
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a53f3d1
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Oh, but my stomach, she is like a waterbed covered in flannel. When I lie on my side in bed, my stomach lies politely beside me, like a puppy.
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Anne Lamott |
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b499d93
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Can you imagine the hopelessness of trying to live a spiritual life when you're secretly looking up at the skies not for illumination or direction, but to gauge, miserably, the odds of rain?
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Anne Lamott |
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c66300f
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I get thirsty people glasses of water, even if that thirsty person is just me.
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Anne Lamott |
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2416413
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We aren't a drop in the ocean, but are the ocean, in drops.
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Anne Lamott |
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76efa8b
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I kept asking God for help, and after a while I realized something -- that Josh was not enjoying this either. He was just trying to take care of himself, and I made the radical decision to let him off the hook.
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Anne Lamott |
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2430bea
|
Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.
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Anne Lamott |
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7f4d1eb
|
Lies cannot nourish or protect you. Only freedom from fear, freedom from lies, can make us beautiful, and keep us safe.
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lies
freedom
fear
beauty
safe
safety
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Anne Lamott |