17 Reasons Anne Lamott is the Coolest
I think we can all agree: Anne Lamott is basically the coolest.
Here are 17 reasons why:
1. She has an olive tree named Lady Gaga.
2. Those dreads.
3. She always carries a pen.
Vital to writers; carry pens. Insights, images are gifts. Or God will say I’ll give that idea to cute old Anne Lamott–she ALWAYS has a pen.
— ANNE LAMOTT (@ANNELAMOTT) March 16, 2012
4. She is brutally honest.
5. And funny.
6. And also kind.
7. She dispenses excellent writing advice wherever she goes.
If you write long over-earnest shitty 1st draft w/too many details & ruminations, then cut by 1/3, take out lies & boring parts, you’re home
— ANNE LAMOTT (@ANNELAMOTT) March 3, 2014
8. She lives in the Bay Area.
Cheers to you, San Franciscans.
9. She has “the rare ability to weave bracing humor seamlessly with earnest, Christian faith.” (Publishers Weekly)
10. She teaches Sunday School.
11. She hangs out with her grandson, who she refers to as her associate.
There’s apparently hot lava all over my living room floor. Thank God my engineering associate has devised a solution: a path of 14 pillows.
— ANNE LAMOTT (@ANNELAMOTT) March 19, 2014
12. She wrote her first novel for her dad (who was also a writer).
13. She was writing on the internet before we were writing on the internet.
Hello, 1997.
14. Sobriety, black coffee, and Safeway cakes.
15. She regularly refers to Riverhead’s publicity team as “those Rascally Rabbits.”
16. She helps us spot improbable moments of grace.
And:
17. She tells it like it is.
“It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools – friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty – and said ‘do the best you can with these, they will have to do’. And mostly, against all odds, they do.” Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies