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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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There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again. Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before.
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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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Be tough in the way a blade of grass is: rooted, willing to lean, and at peace with what is around it.
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poems are small moments of enlightenment
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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.
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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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Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
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Indefinite plans get dubious results.
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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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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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When you write, don't say, I'm going to write a poem. That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself say, I am free to write the worst junk in the world.
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Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
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Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it
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In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people -- people who supposedly want to write -- read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them.
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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.
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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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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.
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Anything we fully do is an alone journey.
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When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.
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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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