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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Write
Junk
Away
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Poem
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Worst
Least
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Freeze
More quotes by Natalie Goldberg
If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
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I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.
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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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You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.
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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.
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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
Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak.
Natalie Goldberg
Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.
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In the West, a teacher imparts knowledge to a student. In the East, a teacher transmits nothing more or less than his or her Being.
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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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Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.
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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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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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There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again. Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before.
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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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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
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 think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.
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The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.
Natalie Goldberg
The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter the act of writing does.
Natalie Goldberg