Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.
Anne LamottRead
Don’t underestimate this gift of finding a place in the writing world: if you really work at describing creatively on paper the truth as you understand it, as you have experienced it, with the people or material who are in you, who are asking that you help them get written, you will come to a secret feeling of honor.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the valuable skill of creatively expressing one's truth through writing.
Anne Lamott highlights the honor that comes from finding your voice in the writing world. The quote suggests that by diligently working to convey your unique experiences and the truths you perceive, you not only help others express their stories but also discover a profound sense of respect and fulfillment in your own craft.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech to aspiring writers.
Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.
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.
Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.
Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, "Well, that's pretty much what I thought I'd see," you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here. [...] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.
...because when people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much.
So much of performing is a mind game. You're memorizing thousands of notes, and if you start thinking about it in the wrong way, everything can blow up in your face.
I know my voice has a limited range of motion; I don't write dramatic monologues and pretend to be other people. But so far, my voice is broad enough to accommodate most of what I want to put into my poetry. I like my persona; I often wish I were him and not me.
He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into nonobjective painting.
In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.
Art is a step in the known toward the unknown
The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.
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