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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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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
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Brooklyn
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More quotes by Natalie Goldberg
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.
Natalie Goldberg
The problem is we think we exist.
Natalie Goldberg
Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth.
Natalie Goldberg
I came out with a book called The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language. It's a book that describes how writing is a practice and how my teaching is part of that practice. I direct the writing and create books but underneath, there's always the river of practice happening. No good, no bad. Just do it.
Natalie Goldberg
I think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.
Natalie Goldberg
It is simply that person's time. Ours will come in this lifetime or the next. No matter. Continue to practice.
Natalie Goldberg
I told all kinds of stories about going to Japan, about playing ball with my father... I wanted to record my life in case it was going to end soon. So, I wrote that and it was very comforting to have that practice in the afternoons in my living room. I just wrote about my life.
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
I love and care about literature, and great writers are our teachers. You're studying their mind when you read their work.
Natalie Goldberg
In the West, a teacher imparts knowledge to a student. In the East, a teacher transmits nothing more or less than his or her Being.
Natalie Goldberg
Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.
Natalie Goldberg
Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
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
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
Understand that writing is like an athletic activity. To play tennis well, you expect to keep practicing, but for some reason with writing, you think you should come out fresh the first time.
Natalie Goldberg
It is odd that we never question the feasibility of a football team practicing long hours for one game yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice.
Natalie Goldberg
Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.
Natalie Goldberg
Oh, my passion! That is what finally carried me through. Let passion burn all the way, heating up every layer of the psyche.
Natalie Goldberg
When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.
Natalie Goldberg
In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.
Natalie Goldberg
