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The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Curiosity
Determination
Passionate
Powerful
Attention
Writing
Heart
Muscles
Visible

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.
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Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we did it before, Each time is a new journey with no maps.
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Shut up and write. Don't talk about writing, just physically do it.
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Wherein we discover that many of the rules for good writing and good sex are the same: Keep your hand moving, lose control, and don't think.
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In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.
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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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Literature gives us the great gift of the present moment.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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Creativity is no big deal.
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Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it
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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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poems are small moments of enlightenment
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We walk through so many myths of each other and ourselves we are so thankful when someone sees us for who we are and accepts us.
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.
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Even an ice cream parlor - a definite advantage - does not alleviate the sorrow I feel for a town lacking a bookstore.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.
Natalie Goldberg
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We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. It is our minds that either open or close.
Natalie Goldberg
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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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Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
Natalie Goldberg