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We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Back
Firsts
First
Never
Graduate
Graduates
Grade
Grades
Beginning

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Creativity is no big deal.
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Oh, my passion! That is what finally carried me through. Let passion burn all the way, heating up every layer of the psyche.
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I am free to write the worst junk in the world.
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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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As writers we need to crack open language.
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I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.
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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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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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[T]he one thing I want for you is to recognize when you are really singing in writing practice and honor that. Trust that. When you were screaming on the page. Maybe that doesn't make a whole book but that is the true seed.
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Anything we fully do is an alone journey.
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I have students that I tell, If your book doesn't sell or you can't publish it, write another book. Quit sitting around. The publishing world is a business, but it's not any big deal. An editor is not your guru. Your agent is not your guru.
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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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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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In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people -- people who supposedly want to write -- read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them.
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Because I've been doing my practice for so long, I knew what to do even under really hard circumstances.
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Clarity and perseverance are difficult in American society because the basis of capitalism is greed and dissatisfaction.
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Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
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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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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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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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