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I am free to write the worst junk in the world.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Junk
Worst
Free
Write
Writing
World

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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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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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 is simply that person's time. Ours will come in this lifetime or the next. No matter. Continue to practice.
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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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As writers we need to crack open language.
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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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The first thing is how awful cancer was, the experience. When you first go through it, you're just trying to survive. But when I wrote about it, I really digested it. It was unbearable but I had practice behind me.
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Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
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It is odd that we never question the feasibility of a football team practicing long hours for one game yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice.
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I don't mean to be flippant about cancer - it was hard, it was tough and it was scary. Then my next manuscript was about cancer because I had a whole new topic to write about. And because I wrote, it didn't take over. Writing took the chaos out of cancer.
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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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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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Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.
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Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
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poems are small moments of enlightenment
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The problem is we think we exist.
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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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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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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing.” (p.90)
Natalie Goldberg