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Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
Natalie Goldberg
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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 77
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Writing
Split
Splits
Fearless
Willing
Open
Fear
Speak
Write
Disturbs
More quotes by Natalie Goldberg
This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.
Natalie Goldberg
The harder you chase something, the faster you go and the less you're able to let life meet life. If you're having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down.
Natalie Goldberg
There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again. Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before.
Natalie Goldberg
Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.
Natalie Goldberg
When you write, don't say, I'm going to write a poem. That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself say, I am free to write the worst junk in the world.
Natalie Goldberg
If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
Natalie Goldberg
Creativity is no big deal.
Natalie Goldberg
When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.
Natalie Goldberg
We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. It is our minds that either open or close.
Natalie Goldberg
Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make it so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, or drop a jar of applesauce.
Natalie Goldberg
Choose your tools carefully, but not so carefully that you get uptight or spend more time at the stationery store than at your writing table.
Natalie Goldberg
The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.
Natalie Goldberg
Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.
Natalie Goldberg
Our job as writers is to listen, to come home to the four corners of the earth.
Natalie Goldberg
I wonder if I don't give too much of myself to writing: I am always half where I am the other half is feeding the furnace, kick-starting the heat of creativity. I am making love with someone but at the same time I'm noticing how this graceful hand across my belly might just fit in with the memory of lilacs in Albuquerque in 1974.
Natalie Goldberg
[T]he one thing I want for you is to recognize when you are really singing in writing practice and honor that. Trust that. When you were screaming on the page. Maybe that doesn't make a whole book but that is the true seed.
Natalie Goldberg
In writing practice, there's no direction. You enter your own mind and follow it where it takes you. We have a great need to connect with our own mind and our own true self. And all of us have a story to tell.
Natalie Goldberg
The first thing is how awful cancer was, the experience. When you first go through it, you're just trying to survive. But when I wrote about it, I really digested it. It was unbearable but I had practice behind me.
Natalie Goldberg
Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that's why we decide we're done. It's getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.
Natalie Goldberg
As writers we need to crack open language.
Natalie Goldberg