Natalie Goldberg Quotes

86 Sourced Quotes

We shouldn't forget that the universe moves with us, is at our back with everything we do.

Natalie Goldberg
Our minds hurtled outward in all directions. We became absurdly creative, Homo artifactus, intolerant of bare cave walls and naked clay pots.

Natalie Goldberg
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
Katagiri Roshi says: "Poor artists. They suffer very much. They finish a masterpiece and they are not satisfied. They want to go on and do another." Yes, but it's better to go on and do another if you have the urge than to start drinking and become alcoholic or eat a pound of good fudge and get fat.

Natalie Goldberg
There is freedom in being a writer and writing. It is fulfilling your function. I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.

Natalie Goldberg
Choose your tools carefully, but not so carefully that you get uptight or spend more time at the stationery store than at your writing table.

Natalie Goldberg
You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.

Natalie Goldberg
We are each a concert reverberating with our whole lives and reflecting and amplifying the world around us.

Natalie Goldberg
Finally, if you want to write, you have to just shut up, pick up a pen, and do it. I'm sorry there are no true excuses. This is our life. Step forward. Maybe it's only for ten minutes. That's okay. To write feels better than all the excuses.

Natalie Goldberg
Have you murdered anyone in the last day, week, month, year, decade? Probably not. Then don't worry about it. Give yourself a break. You're probably a really fine person.

Natalie Goldberg
I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time at my real work.

Natalie Goldberg
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
Have compassion for yourself when you write. There is no failure - just a big field to wander in.

Natalie Goldberg
A responsibility of literature is to make people awake, present, alive. If the writer wanders, then the reader, too, will wander.

Natalie Goldberg
In writing with detail, you are turning to face the world. It is a deeply political act, because you are not staying in the heat of your own emotions. You are offering up some good solid bread for the hungry.

Natalie Goldberg
Literature gives us the great gift of the present moment.

Natalie Goldberg
Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.

Natalie Goldberg
When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing.

Natalie Goldberg
We have to accept ourselves in order to write. Now none of us does that fully: few of us do it even halfway. Don't wait for one hundred percent acceptance of yourself before you write, or even eight percent acceptance. Just write. The process of writing is an activity that teaches us about acceptance.

Natalie Goldberg
Great lovers realize that they are what they are in love with.

Natalie Goldberg
Too often we take notes on writing, we think about writing but never do it. I want you to walk into the heart of the storm, written words dripping off hair, eyelids, hanging from hands.

Natalie Goldberg
Writers are great lovers. They fall in love with other writers. That's how they learn to write. They take on a writer, read everything by him or her, read it over again until they understand how the writer moves, pauses, and sees. That's what being a lover is: stepping out of yourself, stepping into someone else's skin.

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
Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.

Natalie Goldberg
Can we walk that thin line between constant change and continuation? And in the middle of this flux, feel gratitude but not hold on? Gratitude greases the joints to let us let go, and at the same time to stop and realize we received something. Gratitude is the most developed and mature of human emotions.

Natalie Goldberg
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.

Natalie Goldberg
Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.

Natalie Goldberg
When we write we begin to taste the texture of our own mind.

Natalie Goldberg
The only difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.

Natalie Goldberg
Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.

Natalie Goldberg