already number one on most bestseller list. she's on book tour now speaking to tens of thousands of people in arenas across the country. here's an excerpt. growing up, everything that mattered was within a five block radius. my grandparents and cousins, the church on the corner, the gas patient where my mother sent me to pick up a pack of newport's and the liquor store which also sold wonder bread area any candy and gallons of milk. mrs. obama dedicated her autobiography be coming to her parents, brother, daughters, friends, and husband. look for coverage of the michelle obama book tour in the near future on tv.

>> welcome everyone. my name is ted ham and the chair of journalism at st. joseph's college and i want to welcome you to this evenings event on behalf of college. i don'tknow if he saw the sign . out front, we have another event coming up on wednesday i wanted totell you about . it would throw wilson visiting fellow by the name of richard benedetto who is one of the original founders of usa today is going to talk about his several decades of experience in the white house press corps. not exactly a spiritual place, but an important one. so this is the final brooklyn voices event of this fall season so keep in touch, we will keep you posted about what's coming up next season and right now, i want to bring up the co-owner and

person who directs the brooklyn voices series on behalf of ringlike bookstore, jessica stockton. [applause] >> thanks ted, i'm jessica and i'm the events in the marketing director at green light bookstore and we are honored to be hosting anne lamott to present her new book "almost everything: notes on hope". he's going to be speaking with father edward back so you're in for an excellent evening. we're grateful for this partnership with st. joseph's college which allows us to bring you these events in the brooklyn voices series in this space not far from our bookstore. we look at great authors this fall including gary schein guard and barbara kingsolver. if you miss any of those events, listen to past events and other conversations with great authors on our podcast at green light bookstore podcast.

we hope to have spring events up soon and you can look for those at green store bookstore.com. i'd like to thank c-span for working with us to share this discussion with a wider audience. before i move you to tonight's speakers, a few housekeeping things. silence any cell phones or electronic devices. if you purchase a ticket you should already have received your copy of almost everything as you walk in, additional copies of the book and other titles by anne lamott are available through the evening and and will be signing books after the discussion. she will be signing additional ones so she won't have time to personalize. assigning line will form around the perimeter of the auditorium. if you prefer not to do assigning line, we may have pre-signed copies at the table so check with us .

we also will be passing out cards on which you can write questions for anne and we will walk through those in a few minutes, collecting those partway through the discussion and our moderator will pick questions to be discussed on stage so pass those to the end of the aisle when you're ready for them to be collected. our interviewer is edward back , a roman catholic priest of the passionate congregation and also an author, playwright and commentator for cnn on issues of faith, religion and ethics whose work in mainstream media for 10 years. father beck is on sabbatical working on a second play so we're honored to be joining us, speaking with our featured author and lamont, owner of the best seller small victories, stitches, no assembly required, grace eventually, land be, traveling mercies and operating instructions. she's the author of seven novels including imperfect birds and rosie. inductee to the california hall of fame, her new book "almost everything: notes on hope" is perhaps the book we

need most from her right now. uncertainty surrounds us in the news, in our families and in ourselves and even when life is at its bleakest, even when we are as she puts it, doomed, stunned and over caffeinated, the seeds of rejuvenation are at hand. in each profound and funny chapter, she calls for each of us to rediscover the nuggets of hope and wisdom buried within us that can make life sweeter than we ever imagined . >> .. >> .. [applause] >> thank you.

can i talk to the lighting guy from here? it just got so bright i am actually blinded. okay. well, how are you over there? >> i am used to this. >> okay. edward and i have been friends over time, and very excited about each other's work in the world and we were together in la a week ago and got to spend some time reconnecting. i just love love love being with him on stage. it is not just an honor, having a brother appear with me. what we did last time and what we are going to do again, what

it is like, we will sit down and hope you have questions. and to be more sensitive with him. i am stockpiling antibiotics for the apocalypse even as i await the blossoming of paperweights on the windowsill in the kitchen, the news of which captured the fever dream of modern life. everything exploding, burning, crashing to the ground around us or growing older provided me with a measure of perspective and equilibrium and a lovely long-term romance, towns and cities all disappear while we rejoice and thrive in the spring and the sweetness of old friendships. families are tricky. there is a chapter that begins,

families are hard hard hard. there is so much going on that flattens us, that is huge, scary or simply appalling, and yellow roses bloom. and the light is not making a progress, but death by annoyance. and we have loved and been loved. the abyss of love lost to devil rejection and that is somehow leading to new. we are redeemed and saved by love even as a few times we have been nearly destroyed and worse, seen our children nearly destroyed. we are who we love. we are one and we are autonomous. there is another chapter that begins the paradox. why have some of us felt like

jumping off tall buildings ever since we can remember? even those of us who did not struggle with clinical depression. why have we repeatedly imagine turning the wheels of our cars into oncoming trucks? we just do. to me this is very natural. i think it is hard here. the absolute hopelessness we face that everyone we love will die. even our newborn granddaughter, even as we trust and know that love will give rise to growth, miracles and resurrection, love and goodness and the world's beauty and humanity are the reasons we have hope yet no longer how much we recycle, believe in local laws, that our beauty is being destroyed, crushed by greed and cruel stupidity and we also see love and tender hearts carry the day. fear against all odds leads to community, bravery and right h

hopelessness of people in grinding poverty in sub-saharan africa and uptown oakland to john the other we pour our money and time into organizations that feed and mentor people, teaching in uganda and appalachia and water and art supplies. people all over the world teach children, teach girls auto repair and electrical installation, teach voice to care for babies, witnessing with hope, and never witnessed more global international brutality, such goodness in the world's response to our own and there are families of origin.

some of us grew up in the alternative universe of unhappy marriages where we accepted as i am sure your family is just fine. and in the template of love, kindness and mutual respect, patients with the spousal child's foibles but another family, just a few here and there, hardly worth mentioning, stressful, homophobic, neglectful, fundamentalist, racist, alcoholic, schizophrenic and or repressed. brothers and sisters didn't always survive. we became jumpy perfectionists. t.s. eliot wrote teach us to care and not to care, teach us to sit still. we long for this and yet check our smart phones for news, and distractions. just before my 61st birthday i made a list for my grandson in need who were both exuberant and worried as i was out there

and still am in some days and still am right now. my dearest, i began. i have a spiritual mentor named bonnie who for 3 decades loves me and trust god and goodness so crazily that i sometimes think of her as horrible bonnie because i cannot get her to judge me or abandon hope. for 30 years she has answered all of my distressed or deeply annoyed phone calls by saying hello, dearest. i am so glad it is you. i have come to believe this is how it goes when i pray even at my least attractive so dearest, i began, here's everything i know about almost everything that i think applies to almost everyone that might help you someday. [applause]

>> that was beautiful. i went to pick up on something you read. you said i wake up not knowing if our leader has bombed north korea and still this past year has been just about the happiest of my life. how come? >> i found love and i got engaged. [applause] >> i will at you meet with the purchase of each hardback book. neil allen. two years ago my grandson in that time, that is joyful and funny, he still got the slightly baby voice. he was brown and went to the

taber before the election that trump would separate us as every brown child in america felt and he says the funniest things and i love living with him. i love being a little bit older. you care so much less about how you are doing and how people think you are doing. you think about your feet more. and your vision failing and your memory shot. i decided i had a stroke in denver five days ago because i lost so much ground since then. 5 years ago i would have. and i love caring about so much about them stuff. i love my sunday school kids, usually 2 or 3 of them, different ages.

so blessed. >> you mentioned you got engaged, some people who have known you through your writing think of you somewhat as a nontraditional list, kind of a 60s hippie and yet something at your stage of life, institution of marriage, how come is that important? >> he asked me. i didn't want to hurt his feelings. we basically felt married since we met and we got this funny little house for my son and his son and neil's kids when they come to visit and so it felt like i will tell you i did a benefit in san francisco, a

huge calvary press in pacific heights and i had a wonderful interview with van jones who said everything that could happen for writers happened for you, a child that you love who has grown and healthy and a little boy, little grandchild. is there anything you still dream about? i don't know why i felt it was okay to say in front of 1000 people but i said i think i might like to be married. people went did she just say that? it didn't happen for you. what a loser. all she ever wanted was to get married and no one would have her. then i didn't expect to fall in love at 62 with a younger man who was 61. we merged. we saw the first day we would be able to talk for the rest of our lives about books and god

and being parents and politics. we are both very progressive. so why stop? >> that is a great answer. i'm glad i asked it. another quote from the book, peace of mind is an inside job unrelated to fame, fortune or whether your partner loves you. it was really struck by that because so many of us look for our approval or self-worth from the outside. you think it will come from a career or falling in love with someone or some kind of validation. what you are saying is the exterior validation, we know this to be true, can't give you that piece of mind. it is an inside job. how do you come to that? >> it has taken a long time. i was raised to believe that the world, if i achieved enough and had the respective men,

couldn't be a woman. if i had the respect of men who were especially powerful and highly respected that it would be like the fda stamped me with a seal of approval and i would be all well and i would have great self-esteem all the time and joy in life. that kills people. striving, striving to be esteemed enough which you cannot be and will not be. it is fickle. the world is fickle. the world is a male alcoholic who is still drinking and charming and seductive and think you are a honeybee and the next day they can't remember where they met you or somebody else has come along and i tried so hard my whole life, got silver when i was 32

and couldn't drink my way into self-respect anymore and into feeling unselfconscious and whole and i had to get to work and people, mostly silver women, taught me it was an inside job and i was starving to death for my own respect because a girl in the 50s and 60s, a mother and a terrible terrible marriage, not respected by my father and didn't know you could be a great. my friend pat said if your american girl over 12 and not really angry you missed the boat. i looked very different and felt very different and scared. and these women and some men taught me that if you want to have self-esteem you need to do is t-mobile things.

what are those is t-mobile things? service, love of people who are annoying, like some of your relatives, like one of my aunts. i go and visit her all the time and sometimes she is mean to me but jesus doesn't say visit than friendly lonely people, jesus doesn't say please take care of the friendly poor. so i just show up, i learned to show up. when i was uncomfortable, i think it was a nautilus of the soul. over years, over time, then i raised the child and that was so crazy and hard, didn't have any money and i respect anyone who would do that. >> in the book, you teach sunday school at your church, and saying to instill this and

the children, you had them repeat the mantra i have value. tell the story about the little girl. >> i have three kids. i go to a timely failing church with 35 people, two or three kids so i had two teenagers, one was really rough skin and the other a little better, and 8-year-old girl with very severe buck teeth, really straight out bhakti but the loveliest spirit, just like god. when i told the children to say out loud i have value, you can do it in your head now and it is scary because you were taught first of all not to think it. is and she full of herself, right? you were taught you were close to being of value and if you could bring up the b plus to an a-it is scary to say i have value. the teenagers were mortified.

i have value. i have value. the little girl said i have value. then she said it again. i have value. and she is so beautiful. what if i had been taught that as a little girl that i had value as if even whatever shape i was in, however i was doing, a beautiful, precious child, anyone in their right mind would like, without bringing my grades up. there are some seats up here if you want to come up here, reserved for the publisher but we don't care. you can have them if you want. we will look away. >> one of the wonderful quotes from your spiritual mentor was when she said the secret is we

are preapproved. you don't have to get it. we are preapproved and we could lean into that and live into that reality. >> the most stunning thing i ever heard, ten years ago, we are preapproved. everything in the world, every magazine, every commercial on tv, everybody has held the carrot out that if you can bring this up to a certain level you can burnish the circus system a little bit more brightly, then yes, you can get the approval that you still seek. bonnie's decision is you come preapproved and nothing can take that away. it can't be created or destroyed. it is so radical. >> so fundamental but to embrace it is like a lifelong journey.

let's talk about addiction. >> i want to tell you something. you are preapproved. you are. you have value. you have value as is, as is. no one remembered to mention that to me when i was little. sorry to interrupt. >> thank you for that. i will try to live it. you have spoken about your own addiction to alcohol and drugs. you have two brothers who are also addicted and a son, sam. in the throes of sam's addiction when he was that his worst and you were trying to save him and rescue him and fix him you write it is the worst time of your life you wrote in the book. he gets arrested and he said one of the hardest things was

to not bail him out. so much in 12-step programs is about enabling and he wants to fix it at your natural instinct but how do you get to a place of saying he just have to sit in jail to survive? so many parents can't get there. >> one of the evidence for god is the gift of desperation. i tried everything i could think of, besides being spiritual wd-40, it looks like exhaustion and grace looks like just being done and giving up on having any more good ideas. i call it the sacrament where you just sit and go i don't ever have a clue. if i got him out of jail he would die. the only thing in the history of human life, not one single

person has gotten another single person sober or stop binging or starving for gambling not once but ever. we need and we receive a ton of support but you can't do it. it doesn't work that way and i tried everything and kids hate kale because it is so boring. it is so boring. it is so boring. you can't have your phone and you don't get any books. i pray for it and knowledge of god's will for me and the power to carry that out. are you going to leave this beautiful 18-year-old boy in jail? yes. he could get sober and clean right away, took a few more years. i tipped my own bottom with fixing and rescuing, a 12 step program. for those with tiny control

issues and i was doing better at not trying to take control or save him but i had a lot of good ideas, really good ideas. i sent him away, he actually loved it, he had gone for 9 months and came back, we live in a 60s town. they always say in recovery if you have a problem go look in the mirror. people are not doing things to you but our problems are not the problem. our solutions are the problem. if a kid, my outside heart is mad at me i have a solution which is to win or by him back. i got worse and worse. i got to the point i had rats in my head, i looked good on the surface. i do what i do every day. take care of people as god

needs me to, his or her hands, most, many days, all the stuff, rats running around in my mind and our bottom was standing on the street where we live and everybody knows i'm a sunday school teacher and peacenik and all that and i was holding a sharpened pencil to my son's throat. that got my attention. i said you can't be on this property anymore. he had a 2-year-old. start to walk away, i said, give you a ride to the city? 45 minutes or an hour. this is holy spirit because he got in the car. how do you get from where we are to him getting in the car? are you doing that? >> know, it is not me. gremlins. we drove to the city and he got

out. in front of his apartment. he got out, i gave him a hug. i released as best i could. we say everything we let go of has claw marks on it. the hardest work we do is releasing someone we love who may die whose destiny we don't control and two weekly or he said i am clean and sober and celebrated 7 years and it was because i loved him in jail and it was because i went and looked in the mirror. i stopped hurting him with my help. we always say help is the sunny side of control. my help is not helpful. if you know me you know that. >> let's talk about higher power because it is so much a

part of 12-step programs. first step is to admit one's powerlessness. you are a christian. jesus is fundamental to you as a higher power but you include a quote from the dalai lama who says religion is like going out to dinner with friends. everyone may order something different but still sit at the same table. and i wonder what your opinion is about the need for a higher power in someone's life that they have to acknowledge it if the program is going to work. even though jesus is yours, somebody else, a lot of christians say jesus is the way. if you believe jesus is the son of god, i have a truth i want to share with you and give you and i know you resist that kind of you have to believe in jesus so a little about the higher power and whether one needs it for the program to be successful. >> people who want to shove jesus down my throat or anyone else's tend to be very crazy.

[laughter] >> my jesuit friend tom weston said originally that if you want to know if you created god in your own image, he hates all the same people you do. neil isn't a christian but he loves jesus, he loves my church, a sweet sanctuary, such a sanctuary movement in vietnam and a place of welcome and love. i feel, i understand i know nothing. i believe i have a third-grader or golden retriever absence of theology. i keep things so simple with my sunday school kids whether they are teenagers or little ones

and i tell them your love, there is love around you, above you, inside you. there is a beautiful little flame of the divine in you, don't let anyone blow it out, it is safe, you are safe in the arms of god and the people who love you and us and as soon as you have a horrible secret, you are not safe anymore. that is what i teach them. i don't teach about the trying nature of the trinity or who shot the holy spirit. they are made of love. and g, they say god created people because -- in the era of trump especially. i mean that in a nice way. i don't mean that in a political way.

we think about god created the earth and it was good and beautiful and let humans name them, but he thought we would like it here so created to give us the blessing of having a life and to like here. i was startled when i heard that because it is so un-western. i have never once tried to get anyone to come to jesus but i hope you can feel that i have been loved, you can't get from where i was to where i am now. no human power could have relieved me. i had addiction to everything you can have an addiction to except gambling. my friends in recovery said that is a big yet for me.

>> >> you know, one of the most poignant stories in the book is about kelly. i don't think you ever told that story before. kelly was someone who was in the program but what distance her from it is this inability to ascend to a higher power, the jesus thing or the god thing totally turned her off to 12-step programs so she begins to isolate. it is a tragic story but do you think it was related? because she couldn't kind of ascends to a higher power, that did her in or was it not that at all? >> probably it was. this was a dear friend of mine who got sober when i did and she was a successful realtor, she grew up very wealthy in society stages of san francisco, she was fabulous and

had a horrible bottom as an alcoholic and she loved being sober but she said i don't believe in god. it is infantilizing me. they are not talking about god, they are talking about a higher power, anything. a number of people i have known, a small mountain in our county where the coastal walk worshiped and people turned to the mountain which is a sleeping maiden. .. you could use a doorknob, you really could . anything but your own best thinking because your own best thinking gets you to a bottom where you might be able to accept love and help and she stopped being in

groups of sober people but she's just a lovely exuberant person and she had lost 100 pounds when she got sober , she gained it back. the most thing as an american is that you look good and little by little, she had to jens on tuesday, split her head open on a friday and ended up at oakland general, which she called highland hospital . is a really depressing place and i went to see her and i said let's get back with the caribou herd, let's get together with the caribou herd and she said this god thing doesn't really work for me so what can you say? what you say is okay, i'm hearing you say that and i accept that and i love you

and i never tell you i'll pray for you but i said i love you, everyone prays for you and you're the best, i love you,i can't wait for you to go back home and she ended up blowing her brains out . >> but what's so interesting i thought, the woman upstairs . >> fell in love, not romantically but alcoholically with another very big woman upstairs in her apartment. i always tell people that the love of your dog or cat is the closest you will come to experiencing divine love while you're here. she found this woman upstairs and a watched tv and drank together and they made each other love and to me that was the path she chose, a way for her to hook into something bigger than herself which is what they mean by something big and beautiful that love her unconditionally and

showed her she had value so it wasn't god as iunderstand god or god of any kind of goodness but it was, it was love . god is love. >> you put in the book dutifully, kelly, the woman upstairs and i thought that was a beautiful way of succinctly saying it. let's talk about family which we all can relate to. another wonderful quote included by ram dass, is if you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family and you talk about the veneer that so many of us tried to put forward that our families are fine, everything's perfect, everything's fine and you talk about fine the acronym as up, insecure neurotic and emotional so family is not easy for everybody. >> i love and live for my family. my parents are both past, i have an older brother john

whose five years younger who are both all three addicts and alcoholics, all three have more than 32 years clean andsober and we all nearly died , my older brother has been healed of advanced see which he has no money and it's $1000 of fill for 90 days and it is a believer. the state had to be like 6000 and he had been healed and we are there every step of the way for each other and it was really hard. growing up. wewere all three stared . my older brother left so he found drugs and alcohol very early. i raise tivo, my baby brother because mom and dad were in so much tense, quiet, polite distress and they literally should have raised four kids

instead of children, literally. i mean that but they loved us and they were progressives, very avant-garde and marchers for peace and human rights and civil rights and they just couldn't stand each other so it breathalyzer saul, twisted us and we all have struggled with feeling and the mental health and believing that we are safe. because i didn't feel safe as a child, i held my breath and i walk on eggshells and i tried to be my father's wife because he didn't love mom so i needed to be enough woman at five and six for him to want to come home. my mother was very heavy and didn't like my father and she needed a husband and then the little one needed a mother and the older brother used me a lot, they would always take her people, and he was really hurting and he hurt me a lot so we were very scared and then in everyone i know, it was a child, i completely

compared my insights to everybody else outside. so you see families that have money for their beautiful, the daughters are beautiful and have long hair and the parents seem to be happy and it was just an illusion. it was, i thought if you went skiing with their families it meant everyone was doing well . and it turned out that so many kids i know committed suicide and they live on a which is like thewealthiest enclave in our company . and they had skiing vacations and they went to switzerland and it was all a show. they were all on the inside yelling damage and deceptive and they must be annoying because their parents were so unhappy and the parents worked so happy so i had just come to believeevery so often , you come upon someone who

has had a really experience where the father really respective of the mother, was the early feminist and when there were problems, parents went and got hold for them and they didn't try to goad them into doing better than they could. and i was goaded by them saints, saying you got your skin because i was so sensitive. you have to be a completely different person and then his family will function better. every, often in a family that was healthy and the parents really worried and had respect and affection and i could name maybe four of them , i gotten to know and i've never really wanted to sit with them dinner. but when we talk about? so then i'm happy for them, it's amazing that the people that i was two. some of the boys weremolested . they were scary grown-ups

that did not protect the child being brutalized in whatever way. there was just like a line machine and the mother in the 50s had to side with the father because you're not stupid. you align with whoever has the power. and it was one way in the 50s, it was exactly one way so i write a lot about families because the people that tend to come to see me know what i'm talking about when i talk about how frightened i was and how great book by the world i was and as a young child, that was where there was a popular group in the 50s all the overly sensitive child and having such an openhearted, sensitive child was clearly hurting their lives. and a lot of the people that, you might events either had very frightening childhoods

of alcoholism or unfaithfulness or mental illness or they had religion and they ran screaming from the dogma and fundamentalism of their childhoods and only lately or in the last couple of decades were able to find a god of their own understanding love them as is. >> will i write a lot about family, family is so important to me and the stories we could tell. >> and you do. >> you have a chapter on hate and you say it's the worst emotion of all. second only to jealousy. there's a lot of vitriol in the country right now. we seem very divided, politically, you just gone through a very contentious supreme court confirmation hearing. and it seems like there's nothing in between. it's like pro, con and yet you say a pastor, your pastor and word during the homily,

don't let them get you to hate them and that was transformative for you. what's the secret to not letting them get you? >> there's a whole chapter that i can't really say in a sentence or two but all i can say is that i said when we were talking about recovery is that the willingness to change and to do the feeling comes from the pain of not changing and doing the feeling and about a year ago after a year of just insanity and hate and victimize self-righteousness which is sort of my calling card , i found the same thing, if you got a problem, look in the mirror and around then pastor and taking a line was a part of something booker t. washington had said 1 million years ago. he said i shall allow no man to belittle my soul i'm making me pay him. and sorry, martin luther king that up also in our pastor reprises a don't let them get

you to them because then you lose yourself and you become them, then you lose your center, then you lose your serenity and the little rat start up again and you are not a very, you don't have nutritious breadth offer the world because you're toxic. and i got there, the willingness came and i was willing to look at myself. and i madecontacts with my inner donald trump . this kind of, this is a man who has never once been love in his entire life. his brother committed suicide , because of the lack of love and the pain of their childhood. this is an unloved human being and but he's also bombastic and he thinks is right and i'm bombastic and i think i'm right and he's, he can be a bully, i'm not really a bully so much but i start to realize that just

like that old pogoparking, i've met the enemy and he is us . and i know god, i know jesus loves him exactly as much as he loves my little grandchild, that the mystery of grace and grace soften one's heart and the promise is not that it will soften your heart if you're having a little trouble with one person who you kinda are okay with. it's a promise to for you from the hatred, from the clause around your heart keep you from being able to breathe extensively and with in spaciousness and truth. it was me. and the only thing i could change was me. i've always registered voters, i've always been a peace martyr, i've always been for women's rights, i've always been a certain way i had to look at the fact that i am judgmental and bombastic and i have my farms clenched,

my arms crossed and my fists clenched and i didn't want to be placed in grid anymore. i said i don't know how long i'm going to live, maybe 10 years, maybe 20 or two and i don't want to go out on hate. i want to go on forgiveness and that horrible reality is that it begins with self forgiveness and i had to look at the part of me, the rocky coal part of me haven't forgiven myself. and when i did, i was able to get somewhere. and there's this wonderful negative pastor, his name is david roach, the model august . you can see him online and he became a pastor of a church called the church of 80 percent sincerity. and he said 80 percent of anything it's a miracle. 80 percent of truthful and good and obedient and well behaved and 80 percent of

fair and so i would say i'm about 80 percent less toxic right now because you take the action and the inside follows though i started taking slightly more benevolentactions. i thought , i stopped viewing so much and i'm a passionate progressive. and i write a lot about politics, but i stopped stealing and i stopped believing that he was doing something to me. and i just bought well, we're waiting anyways. but no, the tide has turned. and just a little bit off-topic but when the kids wrote us up at parkland high school, i began to feel hope again. i don't remember how long ago that was when the young rosa, when white kids joined their black brothers and sisters in black lines matter, i thought we are going to be okay. between science and goodness

and the young people because young people were not there 20 years ago when we were marching for women's rights and 10 years ago, now they are. go to any of the marches for any social justice issue and you have people veryyoung . young white men are involved because of black lines matter and that's what it took to break the trans- . so anyway, check again in three hours. we'll see how my levels are. >> i could talk to you all night and there's other stuff i want us to talk about. i want to do a few lightning round questions before we do that. how do you pray? >> first thing when i wake up, i lie there and say hi god and in confession at our church which is about five minutes during the service, i

say look, i think we both know what we got on our hands here. and i say i'm sorry and i sometimes mean it. sometimes i say i'm really sorry and then i say you know i don't really mean it and i'm not contrite, i'm notable to change that right now . i know that i can't get him not love me, i can't get god of my understanding to recoil or say the deal is off. but i like, i wake up, it used to be pretty early and i say a little prayer that it's about training my will and my life and i always say the lord's prayer because i some days do believe that we are in heaven. the kingdom is within. everything that has been promised is around me, beside me, beneath me. it's heaven here when there

is love, when people are doing loving things with one another. mister rogers mother always told us to look for the helpers after tragedy and we had that catastrophic fire in santa rosa that killed and wiped out so much in its path, unbelievable. because of climate change. this was not, what was it called when you ask a question? i say one word. a seed round, lightning round . >> you can't do lightning round with annie. >> lightning round take to. >> was the hardest part of loving someone else ? >> -- just how annoying we all are. we're so annoying. no offense, you're not, you're good. >> if you knew it was your last day on this earth, how would you spend it? >> i'd spend it in prayer. i would be doing what i always do which is seeking

union with god and goodness and truth and i would be doing radical self-love. on my last day, i willonly be eating dessert . i won't even be eating fruits . i will be eating dessert andi will not have lost four weeks . and i might smoke, it's been 32 years and i quit smoking. lost, mostly it would beabout not flossing . >> what's the thing you most dislike about yourself? >> how judgmental i am. left to my own devices, until someone busts me or i'm with the precious community and its very transit, i say this is god, i hate them, this person is so lovely, this is and i'm running for my cute little life. this happened terrible, this

happened good and that's what i most probably. >> let's do some audience questions. i don't have time to look through these. so these are unedited, uncensored. how do you feel about social media and haveyour feelings changed in the last few years ? >>. >> i never never did any of it. i wrote a piece you can get on sunset magazine online that you will like. it's about not squandering your time, this one short pressure fleeting life you've been issued anymore and this is about 10 years ago but it's online still and i said get off twitter. and i wasn't on twitter and about six or seven years ago, my son sam and i wrote a book called some assembly required . and he, riverhead was sending us out onto her and both he and the people at her head said we're really not going to do that unless you get on twitter.

they really were clear. they said you need what's called the social platform and i didn't want to be on facebook because i knew that all i would do. and not loss area and then i discovered i could have a writers page at facebook where i could write things, i don't follow people, i don't know how to work it, i have to find neil or my grandchild or my publicist and say you post this for me though twitter, i remember that, my son set it up and after these days i had 100 and i called sam and i said i have 100 people on twitter. he said no way, yes. and then i was off and running. and i really rely on twitter. there's 10 people i follow on twitter that i completely rely on or their perception of what a political happening, what does it mean or what we can do. what we can do. >> i noticed there's a lot of these about writing and we had talked about that though

maybe we can talk about your first chapter. the chapter in the book, the first sentence on writing is what he area and you talk about how to write your story badly. and you want to know what is your writing routine and was the greatest wisdom you can impart about writing for people? >> i wrote a whole chapter on writing that eight pages of this bird by bird consonant and it's mostly to the format of the writing workshops i started doing with my grandson in kindergarten so that i wanted to be able to tell you how to write in a way that five-year-old would understand. and the things i believe in our the original bird by bird story, my older brother who hated school at a paper on bird stew in fourth grade in california, you study birds

in sacramento and you do a term paper on each and he hadn't started. it was due the next day and he was in tears and my older brother did not cry and my dad checked out with him and said take it bird by bird. read a few pages, put it in your own words. draw a picture and we're going to go on to this, read about them and write it in your own words and we will do a picture and it was so profound area that short assignments andterrible first drafts , kindergarten proved the first draft, terrible first draft. no writer you love writes good first drafts. that would have been so encouraging for me to know at an early age. my favorite line besides my dads was el doctorow they writing is driving at night with the headlights on. you can only see a little ways in front of you but you can make a whole journey that way and i think if you're not a writer in the habit of getting your work done, you think the writers you like

know what they're doing and where the book goes , wears a place to start and things along the way and a good way to end the book and no one does, no one knows what they're doing until they do it. you write two and three and four drafts, usually after the second or third draft you can show it, i'm sure you show your work to someone and they criticize it which i hate and when somebody criticizes my work, i think okay, that's fine. we're not friends anymore. because now i hate you. and but you need someone to read your work. it's hopeless if you don't because otherwise you're going to be handing in work that is not good enough yet and people say i have a friend done and she constantly says things done going to love this. the material is strong, the first page is just clearing your throat, you don't need it. halfway through the second page i got interested. most of writing is about taking steps.

>> i forget, my mind went blank because of a stroke i had in chicago. but she said you have to kill your little darlings and you have to do it a draft where you go through and take out the stuff you love more than anything. you just think these parts are so brilliant and the conversations that are just so happy and you know, you've got to take it out. you're trying to hard, sticking out. when we read it were going to bump up against it and go it's great, it's clever maybe. maybe will use itsomewhere else . and then i write at the same time every day. i'm much smarter in the morning. i just am. i tried to get off to an early start if i can. we have grandchild, we have a school, we have school lunches and all of that but i

really tried to start as early as i can and i let myself write really badly. like the things i write that are under 1000 words, maybe 1000 words sometimes, they could be two or three hours and i give them to neil and will mark them up, correct and i'll ask all that and usually at the last minute you go through it one more time and you still can make good changes in somewhat you realize you're starting to hurt the book because you've gotten too uptight and perfectionist and then you release it to whoever is going to. a third of creativity is taking stuff out and it's a racing stuff . i used always write on paper with because i love the sound of on paper, ancient sound like the wind. and then i was probably the last person you ever known to come to a computer but someone bought me i believe it was my publisher brought

me a mac, strawberry mac, remember that year of the sorbet max? it was green and orange and turquoise and strawberry and i ended up with a strawberry mac so i do write mostly on my ipad now. i have paper and pencil with me. you're going to write, it's like you opened up the mailbox in your soul and your open for business and you're going to start having ideas and memories. going to have visions, over your conversations and the express line of the doctor's office, waiting in line to get a book signed and you go god, you can't make this stuff up area is great but then you write it down area. >> when you all read almost everything if you haven't already it will be hard for you to believe that any of it was written badly from the very start because it's beautifully done. and i'd like to conclude with a line, or two lines from the book.being a priest who have todeal with spiritual stuff all the time , to get a

handle on what grace is, amorphous notion that we throw around, you have a sentence in this book that i thought said it so beautifully for me and i'd like to leave it with us this evening. and about grace. it makes you exactly where you are. your most pathetic and hopeless. and load you into its wheelbarrow and chips you out somewhere else. and ever so slightly better shape. thank you for giving us this. >>. [applause]

>> one more thing to edward and ann, one more round of applause . [applause] once again, if you would like to have your book signed, and will be sitting at the table in a few minutes and we can line up around the perimeter.there will be no personalization that she will sign the new books or the old books and we ask there would be no photos in the signing line as well. thanks for a great evening. >> c-span launched book tv 20 years ago on cspan2 and since

then we've covered more than 15,000 authors spanning more than 1000 weekends. in 2004, john stuart was at the new york public library to talk about america: the book. >> i was looking forward to this opportunity to dispel some of the mythologies surrounding myself and my fellow founders, particularly the myth of our inviolability. moderns have an opportunity to worship at the fathers, we will die to protect the second amendment, so dramatic . know why we call them amendments? because they amend. fix mistakes or correct omissions and they themselves can be changed. if we had meant for the constitution to be written in stone, we would have written in stone. actually, most things were written in stone back then, i'm not trying to be difficult but it's bothersome when you blame your own inflectedability and extremism on us .not that we were awesome. we wrote the constitution in the time it takes you nimrod

to figure out which is the eye button and which is in a but we wantgod, we were men. we had flaws . >> watch this and all other programs on the path 20 years at booktv.org. the authors name in the search bar at the topof the page . >> .. now that our program season is in full force, it's nice to see so many familiar faces back in her audience. tonight program is p