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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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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Compost
Voices
Critics
Outside
Afraid
Inside
Voice
Fear

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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I have students that I tell, If your book doesn't sell or you can't publish it, write another book. Quit sitting around. The publishing world is a business, but it's not any big deal. An editor is not your guru. Your agent is not your guru.
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When you are present, the world is truly alive.
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You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.
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I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.
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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.
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So writing is not just writing. It is also having a relationship with other writers. And don't be jealous, especially secretly. That's the worst kind. If someone writes something great, it's just more clarity in the world for all of us.
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Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it
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Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.
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When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.
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While I had cancer, I wrote these twenty-two personal essays about how I lived my life backed by Zen and writing.
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If I didn't have that, fear and projections over what was coming next could have taken over. But it was tough. Don't think I was an angel. It was hell.
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[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.
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You don't know what you're doing. You're just hoping that people won't make fun of you. I had no idea how it would turn out.
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We should notice that we are already supported at every moment. There is the earth below our feet and there is the air, filling our lungs and emptying them. We should begin from this when we need support.
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Clarity and perseverance are difficult in American society because the basis of capitalism is greed and dissatisfaction.
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Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them things they can’t forget stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released.
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I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.
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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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Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.
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Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.
Natalie Goldberg