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The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter the act of writing does.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Correctness
Quality
Write
Doe
Matter
Writing

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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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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Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life.
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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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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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Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.
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Indefinite plans get dubious results.
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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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To encounter a fine book and have time to read it is a wonderful thing.
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Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.
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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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We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. It is our minds that either open or close.
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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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In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.
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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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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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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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Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth.
Natalie Goldberg
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As writers we need to crack open language.
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.
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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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