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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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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Writer
Leave
Doesn
Writing

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.
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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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Be tough in the way a blade of grass is: rooted, willing to lean, and at peace with what is around it.
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Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make it so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, or drop a jar of applesauce.
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I think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.
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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.
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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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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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It is simply that person's time. Ours will come in this lifetime or the next. No matter. Continue to practice.
Natalie Goldberg
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Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.
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Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
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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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As writers we need to crack open language.
Natalie Goldberg
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Writing is not a McDonald's Hamburger.
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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While I had cancer, I wrote these twenty-two personal essays about how I lived my life backed by Zen and writing.
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 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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In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.
Natalie Goldberg
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I honor English majors. It's a dumb thing to major in. It leads nowhere. It's good to be dumb, it allows us to love something for no reason. That's the best kind of love.
Natalie Goldberg