Quote

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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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Something
Faster
Life
Difficulty
Harder
Meet
Coming
Less
Able
Chase
Ideas
Slow

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When you write what you know, you stay in control. One of the first things I encourage my writing students to do is to lose control - say what they want to say, break structure.
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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.
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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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We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.
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Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.
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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.
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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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The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.
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Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.
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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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Even an ice cream parlor - a definite advantage - does not alleviate the sorrow I feel for a town lacking a bookstore.
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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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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.
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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.
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Literature gives us the great gift of the present moment.
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When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing.” (p.90)
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When you write, don't say, I'm going to write a poem. That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself say, I am free to write the worst junk in the world.
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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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Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
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One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.
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