How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
So if you want to get to know your characters, you have to hang out with them long enough to see beyond all the things they aren't. You may try to get them to do something because it would be convenient plotwise, or you might want to pigeonhole them so you can maintain the illusion of control. But with luck their tendrils will sneak out the sides of the box you've put them in, and you will finally have to admit that who they are isn't who you thought they were.
Dying people can teach us this most directly. Often the attributes that define them drop away—the hair, the shape, the skills, the cleverness. And then it turns out that the packaging is not who that person has really been all along. Without the package, another sort of beauty shines through. (11.7-8)
Lamott's idea suggests a practical exercise: even if your character isn't going to be anywhere near death in your novel, maybe it's worth asking what that character would be like if he or she did know death was around the corner. Even if you don't include any of that in your story or novel, you'll still understand that character better.
Quote #5
I remind myself nearly every day of something that a doctor told me six months before my friend Pammy died. This was a doctor who always gave me straight answers. When I called on this one particular night, I was hoping she could put a positive slant on some distressing developments. She couldn't, but she said something that changed my life. "Watch her carefully right now," she said, "because she's teaching you how to live."
I remind myself of this when I cannot get any work done: to live as if I am dying, because the truth is we are all terminal on this bus. To live as if we are dying gives us a chance to experience some real presence. Time is so full for people who are dying in a conscious way, full in the way that life is for children. They spend big round hours. (24.6-7)
Nothing like a few thoughts on death to get the writing day started. But seriously, the kind of work we'd do if we thought we were dying is probably the kind of work that really matters to us. It's those things that you should be including in your writing because it's those things that make your writing approach "truth."
Quote #6
Of course, not everyone loved my book. There were some terrible reviews. My personal favorite was from a newspaper in Santa Barbara, which said that our black sense of humor made us look like a New Age Addams family. "Here's your review from Santa Barbara," my editor wrote on a note enclosed with it, "where people never die." (25.5)
Sometimes a writer can see something more clearly even from bad reviews. This is a moment that shows how important it is for Lamott to write about the big questions death raises, and she gets that across partly through a quote about a reviewer who just didn't get what she was doing.