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Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 77
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Write
Care
Writing
Much
Cares
Nobody
Whether

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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I don't mean to be flippant about cancer - it was hard, it was tough and it was scary. Then my next manuscript was about cancer because I had a whole new topic to write about. And because I wrote, it didn't take over. Writing took the chaos out of cancer.
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We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.
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Oh, my passion! That is what finally carried me through. Let passion burn all the way, heating up every layer of the psyche.
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We walk through so many myths of each other and ourselves we are so thankful when someone sees us for who we are and accepts us.
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We have to accept ourselves in order to write. Now none of us does that fully: few of us do it even halfway. Don’t wait for one hundred percent acceptance of yourself before you write, or even eight percent acceptance. Just write. The process of writing is an activity that teaches us about acceptance.
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Be tough in the way a blade of grass is: rooted, willing to lean, and at peace with what is around it.
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The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.
Natalie Goldberg
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I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.
Natalie Goldberg
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After you have finished a piece of work, the work is then none of your business. Go on and do something else.
Natalie Goldberg
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We shouldn't forget that the universe moves with us, is at our back with everything we do.
Natalie Goldberg
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Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels.
Natalie Goldberg
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Literature gives us the great gift of the present moment.
Natalie Goldberg
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When you bring the darkness to the table, it doesn't rule you or hurt other people, but when we keep it secret, it's dangerous.
Natalie Goldberg
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Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
Natalie Goldberg
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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
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If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
Natalie Goldberg
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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
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It’s much better to be a tribal writer, writing for all people and reflecting many voices through us, than to be a cloistered being trying to find one peanut of truth in our own individual mind. Become big and write with the whole world in your arms.
Natalie Goldberg
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The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners.
Natalie Goldberg
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Creativity is no big deal.
Natalie Goldberg