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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
Determination
Passionate
Powerful
Attention
Writing
Heart
Muscles
Visible
Curiosity

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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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We shouldn't forget that the universe moves with us, is at our back with everything we do.
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Women need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There's something about holding that richness.
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Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning. We should not be ashamed of this. It is good. It's like drinking water.
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Because I've been doing my practice for so long, I knew what to do even under really hard circumstances.
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I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.
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Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.
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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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It is very important to go home if you want your work to be whole. You don't have to move in with your parents again and collect a weekly allowance, but you must claim where you come from and look deep into it. Come to honor and embrace it, or at the least, accept it.
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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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When you are present, the world is truly alive.
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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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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.
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Writing is not a McDonald's Hamburger.
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We have to accept ourselves in order to write. Now none of us does that fully: few of us do it even halfway. Don’t wait for one hundred percent acceptance of yourself before you write, or even eight percent acceptance. Just write. The process of writing is an activity that teaches us about acceptance.
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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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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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I love and care about literature, and great writers are our teachers. You're studying their mind when you read their work.
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It’s much better to be a tribal writer, writing for all people and reflecting many voices through us, than to be a cloistered being trying to find one peanut of truth in our own individual mind. Become big and write with the whole world in your arms.
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