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It is simply that person's time. Ours will come in this lifetime or the next. No matter. Continue to practice.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Persons
Person
Come
Matter
Lifetime
Time
Continue
Simply
Practice
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More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.
Natalie Goldberg
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So writing is not just writing. It is also having a relationship with other writers. And don't be jealous, especially secretly. That's the worst kind. If someone writes something great, it's just more clarity in the world for all of us.
Natalie Goldberg
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This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.
Natalie Goldberg
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I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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When you are present, the world is truly alive.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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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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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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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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Clarity and perseverance are difficult in American society because the basis of capitalism is greed and dissatisfaction.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg