Natalie Goldberg - Writing Down the Bones (1986)

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

Natalie Goldberg
It is simply that person's time. Ours will come in this lifetime or the next. No matter. Continue to practice.

Natalie Goldberg
Watch yourself. Every minute we change. It is a great opportunity. At any point, we can step out of our frozen selves and our ideas and begin fresh.

Natalie Goldberg
We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.

Natalie Goldberg
It's much better to be a tribal writer, writing for all people and reflecting many voices through us, than to be a cloistered being trying to find one peanut of truth in our own individual mind. Become big and write with the whole world in your arms.

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

Natalie Goldberg
Original details are very ordinary, except to the mind that sees extraordinariness. it's not that we need to go to the Hopi mesas to see greatness; we need to view what we already have in a different way.

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

Natalie Goldberg
The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world.

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
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
Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life.

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

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
There's an old adage in writing: 'Don't tell, but show.' Writing is not psychology. We do not talk 'about' feelings. Instead the writer feels and through her words awakens those feelings in the reader. The writer takes the reader's hand and guides him through the valley of sorrow and joy without ever having to mention those words.

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
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
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
One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.

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
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