Natalie Goldberg - You Quotes

37 Sourced Quotes

View all Natalie Goldberg Quotes
Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.

Natalie Goldberg
If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.

Natalie Goldberg
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.

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

Natalie Goldberg
When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.

Natalie Goldberg
What writing practice, like Zen practice does is bring you back to the natural state of mind...The mind is raw, full of energy, alive and hungry. It does not think in the way we were brought up to think-well-mann ered, congenial.

Natalie Goldberg
The only failure in writing is when you stop doing it. Then you fail yourself.

Natalie Goldberg
Talk when you talk, walk when you walk, and die when you die.

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

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
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
Be awake to the details around you, but don't be self-conscious.

Natalie Goldberg
If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you. Besides, those voices are merely guardians and demons protecting the real treasure, the first thoughts of the mind.

Natalie Goldberg
Use loneliness. Its ache creates urgency to reconnect with the world. Take that aching and use it to propel you deeper into your need for expression - to speak, to say who you are.

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
This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.

Natalie Goldberg
The aim is to burn through to first thoughts, to the place where energy is unobstructed by social politeness or the internal censor, to the place where you are writing what you mind actually sees and feels, not what it thinks it should see or feel.

Natalie Goldberg
After you have finished a piece of work, the work is then none of your business. Go on and do something else.

Natalie Goldberg
I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.

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

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

Natalie Goldberg
This is why it is good to remember: if you want to get high, don't drink whiskey; read Shakespeare, Tennyson, Keats, Neruda, Hopkins, Millay, Whitman, aloud and let your body sing.

Natalie Goldberg