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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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This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.
Natalie Goldberg
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As writers we need to crack open language.
Natalie Goldberg
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I came out with a book called The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language. It's a book that describes how writing is a practice and how my teaching is part of that practice. I direct the writing and create books but underneath, there's always the river of practice happening. No good, no bad. Just do it.
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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.
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.
Natalie Goldberg
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You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
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.
Natalie Goldberg
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First thoughts have tremendous energy. The internal censor usually squelches them, so we live in the realm of second and third thoughts, thoughts on thought, twice and three times removed from the direct connection of the first fresh flash.
Natalie Goldberg
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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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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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Watch yourself. Every minute we change. It is a great opportunity. At any point, we can step out of our frozen selves and our ideas and begin fresh.
Natalie Goldberg
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I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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Our job as writers is to listen, to come home to the four corners of the earth.
Natalie Goldberg
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Wherein we discover that many of the rules for good writing and good sex are the same: Keep your hand moving, lose control, and don't think.
Natalie Goldberg