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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.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Great
Dies
Intimate
Writing
American
Telling
Think
Everyone
Meet
Thinking
Dream
Novel
Stories
Wants
Become
Realizing
Feel
Path
Feels
Create

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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If you're having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down. For me, slowing down has been a tremendous source of creativity. It has allowed me to open up -- to know that there's life under the earth and that I have to let it come through me in a new way. Creativity exists in the present moment. You can't find it anywhere else.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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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
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Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak.
Natalie Goldberg
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Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.
Natalie Goldberg
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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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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
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Clarity and perseverance are difficult in American society because the basis of capitalism is greed and dissatisfaction.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
Natalie Goldberg
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Because I've been doing my practice for so long, I knew what to do even under really hard circumstances.
Natalie Goldberg
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I think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.
Natalie Goldberg
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I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.
Natalie Goldberg
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Literature gives us the great gift of the present moment.
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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In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, 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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Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.
Natalie Goldberg
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poems are small moments of enlightenment
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg