How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Truth, or reality, or whatever you want to call it is the bedrock of life. A black man at my church who is nearing one hundred thundered last Sunday, "God is your home," and I pass this on mostly because all of the interesting characters I've ever worked with—including myself—have had at their center a feeling of otherness, of homesickness. And it's wonderful to watch someone finally open that forbidden door that has kept him or her away. What gets exposed is not people's baseness but their humanity. It turns out that the truth, or reality, is our home. (26.11)
Lamott finds in this quote a key to what makes a character interesting: a sense of homesickness for a truth they haven't fully experienced yet. Lamott gets this idea from someone at her church, but maybe it makes sense in storytelling, too: if a character isn't looking for something, isn't feeling a need to find some sort of home or experience some kind of truth, then where is the story going? Maybe a character needs some sort of longing to be interesting.
Quote #8
My friend Carpenter says we no longer need Chicken Little to tell us the sky is falling, because it already has. The issue now is how to take care of one another. Some of us are interested in any light you might be able to shed on this, and we will pay a great deal extra if you can make us laugh about it. For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are the ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food. So write about the things that are most important to you. Love and death and sex and survival are important to most of us. Some of us are also interested in God and ecology. (15.11)
Lamott seems to think there are some fundamental things that almost everyone is interested in, whatever their beliefs—and she seems to think these are pretty important things to write about. But she also recognizes that beliefs about God and nature matter to a number of people, and she is one of them. Maybe that's why she writes about God and ecology, but in a way that recognizes the humanity of people who may not share her perspective.
Quote #9
Or look at the fourteenth Dalai Lama, who is, for my money, the sanest person currently on earth. He says simply, "My true religion is kindness." That is a great moral position—practicing kindness, keeping one's heart open in the presence of suffering. Unfortunately it does not make great literature. You will need to embroider it a little. Otherwise you will have a one-sentence book, and potential agents will look at you as if—as the Texans say—you are perhaps not the brightest porch light on the block. (15.10)
This quote is so Lamott. She shows a bunch of her hallmarks as a writer—respect for spirituality even if it's not the same religion that she practices, passion for an ethical stance, a recognition that telling a great story is different from having a great moral, and, of course, a little friendly sarcasm.