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Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Shut
Anyway
Excuse
Use
Write
Anything
Writing

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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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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Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
Natalie Goldberg
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Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.
Natalie Goldberg
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I have students that I tell, If your book doesn't sell or you can't publish it, write another book. Quit sitting around. The publishing world is a business, but it's not any big deal. An editor is not your guru. Your agent is not your guru.
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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Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
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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Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.
Natalie Goldberg
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Anything we fully do is an alone journey.
Natalie Goldberg
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When you write what you know, you stay in control. One of the first things I encourage my writing students to do is to lose control - say what they want to say, break structure.
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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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.
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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The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.
Natalie Goldberg
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It is very important to go home if you want your work to be whole. You don't have to move in with your parents again and collect a weekly allowance, but you must claim where you come from and look deep into it. Come to honor and embrace it, or at the least, accept it.
Natalie Goldberg
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Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
Natalie Goldberg
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You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.
Natalie Goldberg
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Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg