Top 100 Natalie Goldberg Quotes
#1. 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
#2. First thoughts have tremendous energy. 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
#3. We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. It is our minds that either open or close.
Natalie Goldberg
#4. 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
#5. Once you connect with your mind, you are who you are and you're free.
Natalie Goldberg
#7. Writing is the crack through which you can crawl into a bigger world, into your wild mind.
Natalie Goldberg
#8. Accept loss forever Be submissive to everything, open, listening No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language, and knowledge Be in love with your life
Natalie Goldberg
#10. 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
#11. When you write what you know, you stay in control. One of the first things I encourage my writing students to do is to lose control - say what they want to say, break structure.
Natalie Goldberg
#12. There is no excuse. If you want to write, write.This is your life, you are responsible for it.You will not live forever.Don't wait. Make the time now.
Natalie Goldberg
#13. Tell about the quality of light coming in through your window. Jump in and write. Don't worry if it is night and your curtains are closed or you would rather write about the light up north - just write. Go for ten minutes, fifteen, a half hour.
Natalie Goldberg
#14. This quiet place exists as we exist, here on the earth. It just is. That is where the best writing comes from and what we must connect with in order to write well.
Natalie Goldberg
#15. I consider writing practice a true Zen practice because it all comes back at you. You can't fool anyone because it's on the page.
Natalie Goldberg
#16. WRITE EVERYTHING YOU know about dying. Just go. Don't think, "What does she mean by that?" Dive in. We die in all kinds of ways. Who died? When did they die? how? why?
Natalie Goldberg
#17. We walk through so many myths of each other and ourselves; we are so thankful when someone sees us for who we are and accepts us.
Natalie Goldberg
#18. The positive thing about writing is that you connect with yourself in the deepest way. You get a chance to know who you are, to know what you think. You begin to have a relationship with your mind.
Natalie Goldberg
#20. I had to get slow and dumb (not take anything for granted) and watch and see how everything connects, how you contact your thoughts and lay them down on paper.
Natalie Goldberg
#21. Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make it so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, or drop a jar of applesauce.
Natalie Goldberg
#22. Visualize a place that you really love, be there, see the details. Now write about it.
Natalie Goldberg
#23. To stay close and intimate with experience is to stay close to the mind; the nitty gritty mind of the way things really are.
Natalie Goldberg
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.
Natalie Goldberg
#28. Don't worry, no one ever died of it. You might cry or laugh, but not die.
Natalie Goldberg
#30. Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth ...
Natalie Goldberg
#31. It's pretty nice to be talented. If you are, enjoy, but it won't take you that far. Work takes you a lot further.
Natalie Goldberg
#32. Begin with "I remember." Write lots of small memories. If you fall into one large memory, write that. Just keep going. Don't be concerned if the memory happened five seconds ago or five years ago.
Natalie Goldberg
#34. We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.
Natalie Goldberg
#35. Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.
Natalie Goldberg
#36. I think talent is like a water table under the earth - you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.
Natalie Goldberg
#37. To encounter a fine book and have time to read it is a wonderful thing.
Natalie Goldberg
#38. Happy?" He stared her down. "You can't expect happiness. If it comes along - consider yourself lucky, but that's not what life's about.
Natalie Goldberg
#39. Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.
Natalie Goldberg
#40. 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
#41. If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
Natalie Goldberg
#42. When you write a memory, it isn't in the past anyway. It's alive right now.
Natalie Goldberg
#43. 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-mannered, congenial.
Natalie Goldberg
#44. And what great writers actually pass on is not so much their words, but they hand on their breath at their moments of inspiration.
Natalie Goldberg
#45. 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.
Natalie Goldberg
#46. The state of California itself was now just like me - a free-spirited liberal with a mostly sunny disposition teetering on the edge of financial ruin. (Natalie Teeger)
Lee Goldberg
#47. Ultimately, writing is about trusting your own mind. It is an act of discovery.
Natalie Goldberg
#48. I honor English majors. It's a dumb thing to major in. It leads nowhere. It's good to be dumb, it allows us to love something for no reason. That's the best kind of love.
Natalie Goldberg
#49. In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people
people who supposedly want to write
read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them.
Natalie Goldberg
#50. We should notice that we are already supported at every moment. There is the earth below our feet and there is the air, filling our lungs and emptying them. We should begin from this when we need support.
Natalie Goldberg
#51. 14294Inspiration means breathing in. Breathing in God. You actually become larger than yourself and first thoughts are present.
Natalie Goldberg
#52. Clarity and perseverance are difficult in American society because the basis of capitalism is greed and dissatisfaction.
Natalie Goldberg
#53. The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.
Natalie Goldberg
#54. Keep your hand moving. (Don't pause to reread the line you have just written. That's stalling and trying to get control of what you're saying.)
Natalie Goldberg
#55. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
Natalie Goldberg
#56. 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
#57. Wherein we discover that many of the "rules" for good writing and good sex are the same: Keep your hand moving, lose control, and don't think.
Natalie Goldberg
#58. 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
#59. Sit down right now. Give me this moment. Write whatever's running through you. You might start with "this moment" and end up writing about the gardenia you wore at your wedding seven years ago. That's fine. Don't try to control it. Stay present with whatever comes up, and keep your hand moving.
Natalie Goldberg
#60. I cannot say why, but the simple act of reading it aloud allows you to let go of it. Do not forget this. Believe me, it helps. At first it is a very scary thing to do.
Natalie Goldberg
#61. You must be a great warrior when you contact first thoughts and write from them.
Natalie Goldberg
#62. Write about "leaving." Approach it any way you want. Write about your divorce, leaving the house this morning, or a friend dying.
Natalie Goldberg
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. And don't worry too much about security. You will eventually have a deep security when you begin to do what you want.
Natalie Goldberg
#66. Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
Natalie Goldberg
#67. This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.
Natalie Goldberg
#68. Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak.
Natalie Goldberg
#69. Go ahead; take Kant's PROLEGOMENA TO ANY FUTURE METAPHYSIC and get it to show what he is telling. We would all be a lot happier.
Natalie Goldberg
#70. 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
#71. If we see their (Navajo) lives and festivals as fantastic and our lives as ordinary, we come to writing with a sense of poverty. We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary.
Natalie Goldberg
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. Give me your morning. Breakfast, waking up, walking to the bus stop. Be as specific as possible. Slow down in your mind and go over the details of the morning.
Natalie Goldberg
#75. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write.
Natalie Goldberg
#76. If you never sit still, it does not even hint to that deeper self in you that you are interested. By practice, by showing up, we are signaling that deep motor, that hum of life, that we are ready: Help us. Pay attention and lead us out of our confusion.
Natalie Goldberg
#77. Even an ice cream parlor - a definite advantage - does not alleviate the sorrow I feel for a town lacking a bookstore.
Natalie Goldberg
#80. I remember a friend many years ago who had taped a sign to his refrigerator: There's a dream dreaming us. If you try to think about what that means it makes your mind silly, but that silliness is good.
Natalie Goldberg
#81. 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 that we are everything.
Natalie Goldberg
#82. Happiness is an illusion, Natalie. It doesn't actually exist."
"Of course it does," I said. "It's what you feel when you're not sad."
"That's unconsciousness. And I'm pretty sure that I'm miserable when I am unconscious, too.
Lee Goldberg
#84. If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.
Natalie Goldberg
#85. Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.
Natalie Goldberg
#86. It's good to go off and write a novel, but don't stop doing writing practice.
Natalie Goldberg
#87. 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
#89. We are each a concert reverberating with our whole lives and reflecting and amplifying the world around us.
Natalie Goldberg
#90. 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
#91. I often wonder if all the writers who are alcoholics drink a lot because they aren't writing. It is not because they are writers that they are drinking, but because they are writers who are not writing.
Natalie Goldberg
#93. OK, now write for ten minutes, keep the hand moving, tell me what you carry.
Natalie Goldberg
#94. My goal is to write every day. I say it is my ideal. I am careful not to pass judgment or create anxiety if I do not do it. No one lives up to his ideal.
Natalie Goldberg
#95. Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we did it before, Each time is a new journey with no maps.
Natalie Goldberg
#96. It is also hard to write about a city we just moved to; it's not yet in our body.
Natalie Goldberg
#98. 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.
Natalie Goldberg
#99. One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.
Natalie Goldberg
#100. 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
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