Quote

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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I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.
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The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.
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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.
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Understand that writing is like an athletic activity. To play tennis well, you expect to keep practicing, but for some reason with writing, you think you should come out fresh the first time.
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Writing is not a McDonald's Hamburger.
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It is simply that person's time. Ours will come in this lifetime or the next. No matter. Continue to practice.
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The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.
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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.
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I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.
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This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it.
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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.
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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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I wonder if I don't give too much of myself to writing: I am always half where I am the other half is feeding the furnace, kick-starting the heat of creativity. I am making love with someone but at the same time I'm noticing how this graceful hand across my belly might just fit in with the memory of lilacs in Albuquerque in 1974.
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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.
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Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.
Natalie Goldberg
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While I had cancer, I wrote these twenty-two personal essays about how I lived my life backed by Zen and writing.
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Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.
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As writers we need to crack open language.
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When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing.” (p.90)
Natalie Goldberg
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I think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.
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