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When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing.” (p.90)

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Wrote
Writing
Way

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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To encounter a fine book and have time to read it is a wonderful thing.
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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.
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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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We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.
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The problem is we think we exist.
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When you write what you know, you stay in control. One of the first things I encourage my writing students to do is to lose control - say what they want to say, break structure.
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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.
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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.
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It is very important to go home if you want your work to be whole. You don't have to move in with your parents again and collect a weekly allowance, but you must claim where you come from and look deep into it. Come to honor and embrace it, or at the least, accept it.
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I honor English majors. It's a dumb thing to major in. It leads nowhere. It's good to be dumb, it allows us to love something for no reason. That's the best kind of love.
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Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.
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I read Eve Ensler and thought it was fabulous. Not only that, but it was really the only thing I could relate to about cancer.
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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.
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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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Writing is not a McDonald's Hamburger.
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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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poems are small moments of enlightenment
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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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Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
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.
Natalie Goldberg