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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
Talent
Effort
Water
Comes
Earth
Think
Thinking
Table
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Tables

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We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.
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The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.
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This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.
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In writing practice, there's no direction. You enter your own mind and follow it where it takes you. We have a great need to connect with our own mind and our own true self. And all of us have a story to tell.
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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.
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To encounter a fine book and have time to read it is a wonderful thing.
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When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.
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So writing is not just writing. It is also having a relationship with other writers. And don't be jealous, especially secretly. That's the worst kind. If someone writes something great, it's just more clarity in the world for all of us.
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There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again. Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before.
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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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In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.
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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.
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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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The problem is we think we exist.
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Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.
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Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.
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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.
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Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life.
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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.
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Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.
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