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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
Must
Extraordinary
Mind
Minds
Ordinary
Close
Either

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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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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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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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Even an ice cream parlor - a definite advantage - does not alleviate the sorrow I feel for a town lacking a bookstore.
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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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You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.
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Choose your tools carefully, but not so carefully that you get uptight or spend more time at the stationery store than at your writing table.
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Writing is not a McDonald's Hamburger.
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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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In writing practice, there's no direction. You enter your own mind and follow it where it takes you. We have a great need to connect with our own mind and our own true self. And all of us have a story to tell.
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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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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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When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.
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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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I came out with a book called The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language. It's a book that describes how writing is a practice and how my teaching is part of that practice. I direct the writing and create books but underneath, there's always the river of practice happening. No good, no bad. Just do it.
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Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.
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To encounter a fine book and have time to read it is a wonderful thing.
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Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.
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Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
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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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