Natalie Goldberg Quotes
Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.
We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.
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.
This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.
It is odd that we never question the feasibility of a football team practicing long hours for one game; yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice.
Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them; things they can’t forget; stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released.
Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.
Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we did it before, Each time is a new journey with no maps.
We are each a concert reverberating with our whole lives and reflecting and amplifying the world around us.
Whether you're keeping a journal or writing as a meditation, it's the same thing. What's important is you're having a relationship with your mind.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.
Be tough in the way a blade of grass is: rooted, willing to lean, and at peace with what is around it.
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.
Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.
I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.
We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. It is our minds that either open or close.
poems are small moments of enlightenment
That's very nice if they want to publish you, but don't pay too much attention to it. It will toss you away. Just continue to write.
Writing is the act of discovery.
Women need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There's something about holding that richness.
The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world.
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.
You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.
Oh, my passion! That is what finally carried me through. Let passion burn all the way, heating up every layer of the psyche.
After you have finished a piece of work, the work is then none of your business. Go on and do something else.
You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.
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.
Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak.
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.
Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth.