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Natalie Goldberg
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“Writers live twice.”
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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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“Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.”
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“If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.”
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“Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that's why we decide we're done. It's getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.”
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“Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels.”
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“Anything we fully do is an alone journey.”
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“Great lovers realize that they are what they are in love with.”
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“First thoughts have tremendous energy. It is the way the mind first flashes on something. 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.”
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“The problem is we think we exist.”
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“Writing is the crack through which you can crawl into a bigger world, into your wild mind.”
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“Clarity and perseverance are difficult in American society because the basis of capitalism is greed and dissatisfaction.”
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“Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.”
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“Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.”
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“We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.”
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“Ultimately, writing is about trusting your own mind. It is an act of discovery.”
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“When we write we begin to taste the texture of our own mind.”
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“Often I am asked, who taught me how to write? Everything, I want to say. Everything taught me, everything became my teacher, though at the time I was not aware of all the tender shoots that helped me along, that came up in Mr. Clemente's class, in Mr. Cates's, with all the teachers I can't remember anymore, with all the blank times, the daydreaming, the boredom, the American legacy of loneliness and alienation, my Jewish background, the sky, the desk, a pen, the pavement, small towns I've driven through. The list could go on and on until I named every moment I was alive ... And we can't avoid an inch of our own experience; if we do it causes a blur, a bleep, a puffy unreality. Our job is to wake up to everything, because if we slow down enough, we see we are everything.”
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“The only difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.”
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“Indefinite plans get dubious results.”
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“Literature gives us the great gift of the present moment.”
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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'm never ashamed to read a book twice or as many times as I want. We never expect to drink a glass of water just once in our lives. A book can be that essential, too.”
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“If you love the work, it will love you back.”
Natalie Goldberg, U.S. writer
(1953)
Full name: Natalie Isaacs Goldberg.