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Explore more quotes by Anne Lamott
"Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them."
"Almost every single thing you hope publication will do for you is a fantasy, a hologram--it's the eagle on your credit card that only seems to soar."
"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 say write them all down anyway."
"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."
"And we've read scary books and watched scary movies and TV shows together. He's met monsters, ghouls, and demons on the page and on the screen. There's nothing like watching Anaconda with your best friend or lying in bed next to your mother reading Roald Dahl, because that way you get to explore dark stuff safely. You get to laugh with it, to step out on the vampire's dance floor and take him for a spin, and then step back into your life. When you make friends with fear, it can't rule you."
"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 to be there."
"The Amen is only as good as the attitude. If you are trying to finish up quickly so you can check your cell phone messages, you are missing the chance to spend quiet moments with the giver of life and the eternal, which means you may reap continued feelings of life racing along without you. So as Samuel Beckett admonished us to fail again, and fail better, we try to pray again, and pray better, for slightly longer and with slightly more honesty, breathing more, deeper, and with more attention."
"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."
Exlpore more Addiction quotes
"The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. ... Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers - common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I've heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons."
"Everybody smokes! Models, actresses, everyone! Don't they realize that it's gross? I understand it's an addiction, but it still pains me to see my friends do it."
"All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation."
"We must move in our recovery from one addiction to another for two major reasons: first, we have not recognized and treated the underlying addictive process, and second, we have not accurately isolated and focused upon the specific addictions."
"My mother smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Before she smoked her first cigarette, she was free to choose whether or not she would smoke. After awhile, her freedom reverted to Satan-so it would seem. The choice was no longer hers-so it would seem. Her mind and body were attacked with nicotine cravings that got so bad she would sometimes sacavage through garbage cans for butts when she'd run short on full cigarettes. I watched, baffled at how something so small and so disgusting to me could have such power over my mother. That's the thing about addiction-it binds us one choice at a time. That's also the good news about addition-you can unravel the hold it has on you-one choice at a time."
"What is addiction? Only those that have been kept secret, are addictions. Those that are openly visible cannot be called addiction."
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