bird by bird.

I just finished a book I've been meaning to read since my English 2010 class, sophomore year of college. It's called Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. If you can't read the subtitle over there it says, Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

I LOVED this book. Even though it is directed towards aspiring writers, which I'm not, it is applicable to many forms of art and creativity, and yeah, life in general. Many things she said I want to apply to the way I approach photography and anything that I endeavor to create in my life.

Anne Lamott is an excellent writer herself, with the ability to create analogies and comparisons that caused me to literally to laugh aloud while reading it at work, as well as provide profound, thought provoking statements on life's truths, learned only through going through the arduous and probably painful experience of creating something from your soul. (Did I go too far with that sentence? Are you rolling your eyes at me?)

Here are a few of my favorite quotations (and I think you people will at least like the first one):

"...for some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understnad who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of all the things that you don't get in real life--wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift."

"It helps to resign as the controller of your fate. All that energy we expend to keep things running right is not what's keeping things running right. We're bugs struggling in the river, brightly visible to the trout below. With that fact in mind, people like me make up all these rules to giveus the illusion that we are in charge. I need to say to myself, they're not needed, hon. Just take in the buggy pleasures. Be kind to the others, grab the fleck of riverweed, notice how beautifully your bug legs scull." (Oh... I love that.)

"Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it's right. To be great, art has to point somewhere."

"'So why does our writing matter, again?' they ask. Because of the spirit, I say. Because of the heart. 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."