Lara Lillibridge > Lara's Quotes

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  • #1
    Anne Lamott
    “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.”
    ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
    tags: life, perfectionism, writing
    1349 likes

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  • #2
    Anne Lamott
    “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 singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”
    ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
    tags: books, literature, reading, words, writing
    852 likes

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  • #3
    Anne Lamott
    “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
    ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
    1270 likes

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  • #4
    Anne Lamott
    “If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.”
    ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
    tags: writing, writing-advice, writing-life
    400 likes

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  • #5
    L.M. Montgomery
    “You can't have many exclamation points left,' thought Anne, 'but no doubt the supply of italics is inexhaustible.”
    ― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars
    tags: exclamation-points, italics, l-m-montgomery
    19 likes

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  • #6
    F. Scott Fitzgerald
    “Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”
    ― F. Scott Fitzgerald
    tags: emphasis, exclamation-points, style, writing
    1892 likes

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  • #7
    CrimethInc.
    “Note: When reading dry political theory, such as the texts you will find on the following pages, it may be useful to apply the Exclamation Point Test from time to time, to determine if the material you are reading is actually relevant to your life. To apply this test, simply go through the text replacing all the punctuation marks at the ends of the sentences with exclamation points. If the results sound absurd when read aloud, then you know you're wasting your time.”
    ― CrimethInc., Days of War, Nights of Love: Crimethink For Beginners
    tags: books, exclamation-points, history, reading
    13 likes

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  • #8
    Howard Mittelmark
    “Here is an appropriate use of the exclamation mark:
    The last thing he expected when the elevator door opened was the snarling tiger that leapt at him.
    "Ahhhhh!"
    ...
    In almost all situations that do not involve immediate physical danger or great surprise, you should think twice before using an exclamation mark. If you have thought twice and the exclamation mark is still there, think about it three times, or however many times it takes until you delete it.”
    ― Howard Mittelmark, How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them—A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide
    tags: exclamation-points, funny, punctuation, writing
    12 likes

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  • #9
    Judy Blume
    “Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.”
    ― Judy Blume
    tags: books, censor, communication, freedom, philosophy
    2120 likes

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  • #10
    Tom Shippey
    “The cry that 'fantasy is escapist' compared to the novel is only an echo of the older cry that novels are 'escapist' compared with biography, and to both cries one should make the same answer: that freedom to invent outweighs loyalty to mere happenstance, the accidents of history; and good readers should know how to filter a general applicability from a particular story.”
    ― Tom Shippey, The Road to Middle-Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology
    tags: fantasy, fiction, tolkien, tom-shippey, writing
    12 likes

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  • #11
    Jyoti Arora
    “No book can be written till it wants to be written, till it shouts to be written, and raises up a persistent din in the writer's head. And then, if you want peace, you just have to pull it out and freeze it in print. Nothing less would do.”
    ― Jyoti Arora
    tags: book, fiction-novel, story, storytelling, writer, writing
    13 likes

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  • #12
    Robert Benchley
    “A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated.”
    ― Robert Benchley
    tags: humor, writing
    7 likes

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  • #13
    Nicole Lyons
    “She will blaze through you like a gypsy wildfire. Igniting you soul and dancing in its flames. And when she is gone, the smell of her smoke will be the only thing left to soothe you.”
    ― Nicole Lyons
    tags: beautiful-quotes, dance, dance-quotes, dancing, gypsy, gypsy-quotes, love, love-quotes, lovers, passion, poetry, poetry-quotes, quote-of-the-day, quotes, strong-women, wildfire
    107 likes

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  • #14
    Jessica Valenti
    “What’s the worst possible thing you can call a woman? Don’t hold back, now.
    You’re probably thinking of words like slut, whore, bitch, cunt (I told you not to hold back!), skank.
    Okay, now, what are the worst things you can call a guy? Fag, girl, bitch, pussy. I’ve even heard the term “mangina.”
    Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl. The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Being a woman is the ultimate insult. Now tell me that’s not royally fucked up.”
    ― Jessica Valenti, Full Frontal Feminism
    tags: double-standards, eye-opening, feminism, gender-inequality, insults, men, names, sexism, woman, womanhood, women
    2163 likes

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  • #15
    Cassandra Clare
    “We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.”
    ― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince
    tags: dreams, letters, love, love-at-first-sight, power-of-words, writing
    8246 likes

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  • #16
    Kelly Corrigan
    “Being in our lives *as they are* is probably one of the most common struggles people have.”
    ― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say
    tags: acceptance
    20 likes

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  • #17
    Frances de Pontes Peebles
    “Exile and fame have similar side effects: if you experience either one, your world is made narrow, and the only people can bear – the only ones who truly understand you – are the ones who are in the same boat.”
    ― Frances de Pontes Peebles, The Air You Breathe
    tags: exile, fame
    7 likes



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