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Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Never
Pastime
Favorite
Poetry
American

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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[T]he one thing I want for you is to recognize when you are really singing in writing practice and honor that. Trust that. When you were screaming on the page. Maybe that doesn't make a whole book but that is the true seed.
Natalie Goldberg
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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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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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I wonder if I don't give too much of myself to writing: I am always half where I am the other half is feeding the furnace, kick-starting the heat of creativity. I am making love with someone but at the same time I'm noticing how this graceful hand across my belly might just fit in with the memory of lilacs in Albuquerque in 1974.
Natalie Goldberg
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In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.
Natalie Goldberg
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The first thing is how awful cancer was, the experience. When you first go through it, you're just trying to survive. But when I wrote about it, I really digested it. It was unbearable but I had practice behind me.
Natalie Goldberg
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Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
Natalie Goldberg
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Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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I have students that I tell, If your book doesn't sell or you can't publish it, write another book. Quit sitting around. The publishing world is a business, but it's not any big deal. An editor is not your guru. Your agent is not your guru.
Natalie Goldberg
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I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.
Natalie Goldberg
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The problem is we think we exist.
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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I read Eve Ensler and thought it was fabulous. Not only that, but it was really the only thing I could relate to about cancer.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
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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Writing is not a McDonald's Hamburger.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg