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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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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
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Brooklyn
New York
Earth
Home
Come
Corners
Writers
Listen
Four
Jobs
More quotes by Natalie Goldberg
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
Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.
Natalie Goldberg
[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
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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There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again. Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before.
Natalie Goldberg
poems are small moments of enlightenment
Natalie Goldberg
I think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.
Natalie Goldberg
Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we did it before, Each time is a new journey with no maps.
Natalie Goldberg
We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.
Natalie Goldberg
This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.
Natalie Goldberg
We shouldn't forget that the universe moves with us, is at our back with everything we do.
Natalie Goldberg
I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.
Natalie Goldberg
While I had cancer, I wrote these twenty-two personal essays about how I lived my life backed by Zen and writing.
Natalie Goldberg
I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.
Natalie Goldberg
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.
Natalie Goldberg
Be tough in the way a blade of grass is: rooted, willing to lean, and at peace with what is around it.
Natalie Goldberg
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
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.
Natalie Goldberg
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
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.
Natalie Goldberg
