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Clarity and perseverance are difficult in American society because the basis of capitalism is greed and dissatisfaction.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Clarity
Greed
Basis
Bases
Capitalism
Society
American
Dissatisfaction
Difficult
Perseverance

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As writers we need to crack open language.
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Really you don't need more information. If you've lived twenty years, you probably have enough material for the rest of your life
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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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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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You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.
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Our job as writers is to listen, to come home to the four corners of the earth.
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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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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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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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Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them things they can’t forget stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released.
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When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.
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In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.
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