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This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Practice
Running
School
Better
Writing
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More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.
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
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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.
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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Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it
Natalie Goldberg
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The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter the act of writing does.
Natalie Goldberg
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It’s much better to be a tribal writer, writing for all people and reflecting many voices through us, than to be a cloistered being trying to find one peanut of truth in our own individual mind. Become big and write with the whole world in your arms.
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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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.
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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Shut up and write. Don't talk about writing, just physically do it.
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 think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.
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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Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.
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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I love and care about literature, and great writers are our teachers. You're studying their mind when you read their work.
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
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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.
Natalie Goldberg