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We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. It is our minds that either open or close.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Open
Remember
Everything
Extraordinary
Must
Minds
Mind
Ordinary
Close
Either

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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We should notice that we are already supported at every moment. There is the earth below our feet and there is the air, filling our lungs and emptying them. We should begin from this when we need support.
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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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This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.
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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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Creativity is no big deal.
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Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.
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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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Indefinite plans get dubious results.
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This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it.
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Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning. We should not be ashamed of this. It is good. It's like drinking water.
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Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels.
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I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Shut up and write. Don't talk about writing, just physically do it.
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Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth.
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