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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.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Book
Pages
Whole
Singing
Writing
Honor
Thing
Trust
Screaming
Really
Maybe
Seed
Make
Practice
Page
Doesn
Seeds
True
Recognize

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I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.
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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.
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Women need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There's something about holding that richness.
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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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The problem is we think we exist.
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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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If you're having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down. For me, slowing down has been a tremendous source of creativity. It has allowed me to open up -- to know that there's life under the earth and that I have to let it come through me in a new way. Creativity exists in the present moment. You can't find it anywhere else.
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The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.
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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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Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.
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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.
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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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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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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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Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.
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I read Eve Ensler and thought it was fabulous. Not only that, but it was really the only thing I could relate to about cancer.
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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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I told all kinds of stories about going to Japan, about playing ball with my father... I wanted to record my life in case it was going to end soon. So, I wrote that and it was very comforting to have that practice in the afternoons in my living room. I just wrote about my life.
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You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.
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