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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.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Drinking
Beginning
Water
Back
Good
Like
Ashamed

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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In the West, a teacher imparts knowledge to a student. In the East, a teacher transmits nothing more or less than his or her Being.
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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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If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
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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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We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.
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While I had cancer, I wrote these twenty-two personal essays about how I lived my life backed by Zen and writing.
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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.
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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 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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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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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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Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.
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I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.
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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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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.
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Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.
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We shouldn't forget that the universe moves with us, is at our back with everything we do.
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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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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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I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.
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