Quote

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.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Writers
Waiting
Forget
Obsessions
Ends
Haunt
Stories
Released
Body
Obsession
Writing
Bodies
Things
Carry

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I often wonder if all the writers who are alcoholics drink a lot because they aren't writing. It is not because they are writers that they are drinking, but because they are writers who are not writing.
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Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak.
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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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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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I think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.
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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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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.
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In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.
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Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
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Choose your tools carefully, but not so carefully that you get uptight or spend more time at the stationery store than at your writing table.
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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.
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Literature gives us the great gift of the present moment.
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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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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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First thoughts have tremendous energy. The internal censor usually squelches them, so we live in the realm of second and third thoughts, thoughts on thought, twice and three times removed from the direct connection of the first fresh flash.
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Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.
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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.
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One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.
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Don't let yourself be thrown away....Continue on no matter what....Continue to make a positive effort for the good.
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Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.
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