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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.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Earth
Think
Thinking
Table
Like
Tables
Talent
Effort
Water
Comes

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.
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.
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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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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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I think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.
Natalie Goldberg
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Watch yourself. Every minute we change. It is a great opportunity. At any point, we can step out of our frozen selves and our ideas and begin fresh.
Natalie Goldberg
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I love and care about literature, and great writers are our teachers. You're studying their mind when you read their work.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people -- people who supposedly want to write -- read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them.
Natalie Goldberg
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The problem is we think we exist.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
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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Women need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There's something about holding that richness.
Natalie Goldberg
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Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
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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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.
Natalie Goldberg