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While I had cancer, I wrote these twenty-two personal essays about how I lived my life backed by Zen and writing.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Twenties
Cancer
Wrote
Lived
Personal
Two
Backed
Writing
Essays
Life
Twenty

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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Literature gives us the great gift of the present moment.
Natalie Goldberg
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Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them things they can’t forget stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released.
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Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
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The harder you chase something, the faster you go and the less you're able to let life meet life. If you're having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down.
Natalie Goldberg
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I love and care about literature, and great writers are our teachers. You're studying their mind when you read their work.
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Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.
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When you are present, the world is truly alive.
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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poems are small moments of enlightenment
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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Indefinite plans get dubious results.
Natalie Goldberg
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Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.
Natalie Goldberg
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I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
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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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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The problem is we think we exist.
Natalie Goldberg
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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.
Natalie Goldberg
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The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter the act of writing does.
Natalie Goldberg