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Understand that writing is like an athletic activity. To play tennis well, you expect to keep practicing, but for some reason with writing, you think you should come out fresh the first time.
Natalie Goldberg
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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
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More quotes by Natalie Goldberg
Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak.
Natalie Goldberg
I often wonder if all the writers who are alcoholics drink a lot because they aren't writing. It is not because they are writers that they are drinking, but because they are writers who are not writing.
Natalie Goldberg
Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.
Natalie Goldberg
If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
Natalie Goldberg
Anything we fully do is an alone journey.
Natalie Goldberg
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
Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
Natalie Goldberg
Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it
Natalie Goldberg
The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.
Natalie Goldberg
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
We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.
Natalie Goldberg
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.
Natalie Goldberg
[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
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.
Natalie Goldberg
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
It is odd that we never question the feasibility of a football team practicing long hours for one game yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice.
Natalie Goldberg
Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.
Natalie Goldberg
Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
Natalie Goldberg
Women need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There's something about holding that richness.
Natalie Goldberg
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
