Quote

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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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Opportunity
Minute
Change
Step
Ideas
Begin
Self
Watches
Great
Watch
Every
Minutes
Selves
Steps
Frozen
Point
Fresh

More quotes by 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.
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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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I don't mean to be flippant about cancer - it was hard, it was tough and it was scary. Then my next manuscript was about cancer because I had a whole new topic to write about. And because I wrote, it didn't take over. Writing took the chaos out of cancer.
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If I didn't have that, fear and projections over what was coming next could have taken over. But it was tough. Don't think I was an angel. It was hell.
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Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
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In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.
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I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.
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I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.
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Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
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poems are small moments of enlightenment
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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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Don't let yourself be thrown away....Continue on no matter what....Continue to make a positive effort for the good.
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I wonder if I don't give too much of myself to writing: I am always half where I am the other half is feeding the furnace, kick-starting the heat of creativity. I am making love with someone but at the same time I'm noticing how this graceful hand across my belly might just fit in with the memory of lilacs in Albuquerque in 1974.
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Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.
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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.
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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.
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Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.
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So writing is not just writing. It is also having a relationship with other writers. And don't be jealous, especially secretly. That's the worst kind. If someone writes something great, it's just more clarity in the world for all of us.
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The problem is we think we exist.
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We have to accept ourselves in order to write. Now none of us does that fully: few of us do it even halfway. Don’t wait for one hundred percent acceptance of yourself before you write, or even eight percent acceptance. Just write. The process of writing is an activity that teaches us about acceptance.
Natalie Goldberg