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Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 77
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Suffering
Idea
Artist
Ideas
Writing
Make
Lone
Kill
Harder

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If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
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This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.
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The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.
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After you have finished a piece of work, the work is then none of your business. Go on and do something else.
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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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Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.
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Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.
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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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Our job as writers is to listen, to come home to the four corners of the earth.
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When you bring the darkness to the table, it doesn't rule you or hurt other people, but when we keep it secret, it's dangerous.
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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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We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.
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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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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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The harder you chase something, the faster you go and the less you're able to let life meet life. If you're having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down.
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I told all kinds of stories about going to Japan, about playing ball with my father... I wanted to record my life in case it was going to end soon. So, I wrote that and it was very comforting to have that practice in the afternoons in my living room. I just wrote about my life.
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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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The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners.
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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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