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Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make it so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, or drop a jar of applesauce.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Matter
Orderly
Right
Drop
Trying
Legs
Make
Lose
Love
Loses
Life
Middle
Dies
Fall
Jars

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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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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Because I've been doing my practice for so long, I knew what to do even under really hard circumstances.
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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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You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.
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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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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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You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.
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When you are present, the world is truly alive.
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Oh, my passion! That is what finally carried me through. Let passion burn all the way, heating up every layer of the psyche.
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In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.
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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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After you have finished a piece of work, the work is then none of your business. Go on and do something else.
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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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Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
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Our job as writers is to listen, to come home to the four corners of the earth.
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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.
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You don't know what you're doing. You're just hoping that people won't make fun of you. I had no idea how it would turn out.
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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.
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I read Eve Ensler and thought it was fabulous. Not only that, but it was really the only thing I could relate to about cancer.
Natalie Goldberg
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Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak.
Natalie Goldberg