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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.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Rooted
Grass
Tough
Willing
Peace
Blade
Around
Blades
Way
Lean

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If I didn't have that, fear and projections over what was coming next could have taken over. But it was tough. Don't think I was an angel. It was hell.
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Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
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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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Because I've been doing my practice for so long, I knew what to do even under really hard circumstances.
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We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.
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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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We should notice that we are already supported at every moment. There is the earth below our feet and there is the air, filling our lungs and emptying them. We should begin from this when we need support.
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Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.
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When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing.” (p.90)
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Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.
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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 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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As writers we need to crack open language.
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Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels.
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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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Really you don't need more information. If you've lived twenty years, you probably have enough material for the rest of your life
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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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Anything we fully do is an alone journey.
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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.
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Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we did it before, Each time is a new journey with no maps.
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