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The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Wisdom
Neurosis
Difference
Differences
Struggle

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.
Natalie Goldberg
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Indefinite plans get dubious results.
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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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.
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
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As writers we need to crack open language.
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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I consider writing practice a true Zen practice because it all comes back at you. You can't fool anyone because it's on the page.
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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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.
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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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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I told all kinds of stories about going to Japan, about playing ball with my father... I wanted to record my life in case it was going to end soon. So, I wrote that and it was very comforting to have that practice in the afternoons in my living room. I just wrote about my life.
Natalie Goldberg
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This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.
Natalie Goldberg
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We shouldn't forget that the universe moves with us, is at our back with everything we do.
Natalie Goldberg
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Shut up and write. Don't talk about writing, just physically do it.
Natalie Goldberg
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Our job as writers is to listen, to come home to the four corners of the earth.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
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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Be tough in the way a blade of grass is: rooted, willing to lean, and at peace with what is around it.
Natalie Goldberg