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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
American
Never
Pastime
Favorite
Poetry

More quotes by 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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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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Watch yourself. Every minute we change. It is a great opportunity. At any point, we can step out of our frozen selves and our ideas and begin fresh.
Natalie Goldberg
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Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
Natalie Goldberg
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When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.
Natalie Goldberg
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Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that's why we decide we're done. It's getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.
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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In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.
Natalie Goldberg
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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
Natalie Goldberg
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When you are present, the world is truly alive.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
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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As writers we need to crack open language.
Natalie Goldberg
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We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.
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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I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.
Natalie Goldberg
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I consider writing practice a true Zen practice because it all comes back at you. You can't fool anyone because it's on the page.
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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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them things they can’t forget stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released.
Natalie Goldberg