Natalie Goldberg Quotes & Sayings

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

[T]he one thing I want for you is to recognize when you are really singing in writing practice and honor that. Trust that. When you were screaming on the page. Maybe that doesn't make a whole book but that is the true seed. — Natalie Goldberg

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. — Natalie Goldberg

Inspiration means breathing in. Breathing in God. — Natalie Goldberg

Clarity and perseverance are difficult in American society because the basis of capitalism is greed and dissatisfaction. — Natalie Goldberg

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

I'm sorry I don't have brilliant reasons for beginning a novel. As you go along, you make up reasons to do what you want. There's an open space. Enter it. — Natalie Goldberg

You must be a great warrior when you contact first thoughts and write from them. — Natalie Goldberg

Writing, too, is 90 percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you wrote, it pours out of you. If you can capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else. You don't only listen to the air, the chair, and the door. And go beyond the door. Take in the sound of the season, the sound of the color coming in through the windows. Listen to the past, future, and present right where you are. Listen with your whole body, not only with your ears, but with your hands, your face, and the back of your neck.
Listening is receptivity. The deeper you can listen, the better you can write. You can take in the way things are without judgment, and the next day you can write the truth about the way things are."
...If you can capture the way things are that's all the poetry you ever need. — Natalie Goldberg

Ultimately, writing is about trusting your own mind. It is an act of discovery. — Natalie Goldberg

This is what metaphor is. It is not saying that an ant is an elephant. Perhaps; both are alive. No. Metaphor is saying the ant is an elephant. Now, logically speaking, I know there is a difference. If you put elephants and ants before me, I believe that every time I will correctly identify the elephant and the ant. So metaphor must come from a very different place than that of the logical, intelligent mind. It comes from a place that is very courageous, willing to step out of our preconceived ways of seeing things and open so large that it can see the oneness in an ant and in an elephant. — 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

Never underestimate people. They do desire the cut of truth. — Natalie Goldberg

OK, now write for ten minutes, keep the hand moving, tell me what you carry. — Natalie Goldberg

Writing is 100% listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you write, it pours out of you. if you can capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else. — Natalie Goldberg

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

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

Once you connect with your mind, you are who you are and you're free. — 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

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

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

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

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

First, consider the pen you write with. It should be a fast-writing pen because your thoughts are always much faster than your hand. You don't want to slow up your hand even more with a slow pen. A ballpoint, a pencil, a felt tip, for sure, are slow. Go to a stationery store and see what feels good to you. Try out different kinds. Don't get too fancy and expensive. I mostly use a cheap Sheaffer fountain pen, about $1.95 ... You want to be able to feel the connection and texture of the pen on paper. — Natalie Goldberg

If you love the work, it will love you back. — 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

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

It's okay to embark on writing because you think it will get you love. At least it gets you going, but it doesn't last. After a while you realize that no one cares that much. Then you find another reason: money. You can dream on that one while the bills pile up. Then you think: "Well, I'm the sensitive type. I have to express myself." Do me a favor. Don't be so sensitive. Be tough. It will get you further along when you get rejected.
Finally, you just do it because you happen to like it. — Natalie Goldberg

The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does. — Natalie Goldberg

It is also hard to write about a city we just moved to; it's not yet in our body. — Natalie Goldberg

What crannies of untouched perception can you explore? What autumn was it that the moon entered your life? When was it that you picked blueberries at their quintessential moment? How long did you wait for your first true bike? Who are your angels? What are you thinking of? Not thinking of? What are you looking at? Not looking at? — Natalie Goldberg

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

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. — Natalie Goldberg

The artist and the alcoholic have parallel paths. They both go into the darkness, but the alcoholic gets stuck there. The artist (if she is not also addicted) goes into the darkness and is transformed by the experience and comes out more alive. — Natalie Goldberg

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

Basically, if you want to become a good writer, you need to do three things. Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. And don't think too much. Just enter the heat of words and sounds and colored sensations and keep your pen moving across the page. If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you. — Natalie Goldberg

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

Know that you will eventually have to leave everything behind; the writing will demand it of you. — 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

We are searching for the core of our lives; our culture intuits that writing, that ancient activity, might be the pathway ... Awakening does not feed ego's needs and desires; it pulverizes the self. Our society couldn't knowingly bear such reduction, so we've tricked ourselves into the same path but call it writing. — Natalie Goldberg

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

People often say, "I was walking along [or driving, shopping, jogging] and I had this whole poem go through my mind, but when I sat down to write it, I couldn't get it to come out right." I never can either. Sitting to write is another activity. Let go of walking or jogging and the poem that was born then in your mind. This is another moment. Write another poem. Perhaps secretly hope something of what you thought a while ago might come out, but let it come out however it does. Don't force it. — Natalie Goldberg

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. — Natalie Goldberg

I never gained control of my mind - how do you dominate an ocean? - but I began to form a real relationship with it. Through writing and meditation I identified monkey mind, that constant critic, commentator, editor, general slug and pain-in-the-ass, the voice that says, "I can't do this, I'm bored, I hate myself, I'm no good, I can't sit still, who do I think I am?" I saw that most of my life had been spent following that voice as though it were God, telling me the real meaning of life - "Natalie, you can't write shit" - when, in fact, it was a mechanical contraption that all human minds contain. — Natalie Goldberg

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

Why else are first thoughts so energizing? Because they have to do with freshness and inspiration. Inspiration means "breathing in." Breathing in God. You actually become larger than yourself, and first thoughts are present. They are not a cover-up of what is actually happening or being felt. The present is imbued with tremendous energy. It is what is. — Natalie Goldberg

It is good to pay attention to our dreams. For a period of a few weeks, write them down each morning. You don't have to do anything else. Just write them down. They have their own magic and will bleed into your waking life. While — Natalie Goldberg

Failure is a hard word for people to take. Use the word kindness then instead. Let yourself be kind. And this kindness comes from an understanding of what it is to be a human being. Have compassion for yourself when you write. There is no failure - just a big field to wander in. — Natalie Goldberg

The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart. — Natalie Goldberg

In other words you disappear, you become one with your words, not separate, and when you put your pen down, the you who was writing is gone. — 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

Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it — Natalie Goldberg

Handwriting is more connected to the movement of the heart. — Natalie Goldberg

Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we did it before, Each time is a new journey with no maps. — Natalie Goldberg

Sometimes people say to me, "I want to write, but I have five kids, a full-time job, a wife who beats me, a tremendous debt to my parents," and so on.
I say to them, "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, even if it is ten minutes once a week. — Natalie Goldberg

Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write. — Natalie Goldberg

We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. It is our minds that either open or close. — Natalie Goldberg

poems are small moments of enlightenment — Natalie Goldberg

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

Of course, we are drawn to teachers who unconsciously mirror our own psychology. None of us are clean. We all make mistakes. It's the repetition of those mistakes and the refusal to look at them that compound the suffering and assure their continuation. — Natalie Goldberg

When you are present, the world is truly alive. — 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

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

TAKE A SUBJECT, a situation, a story that is hard for you to talk about, and write about it. Write slowly, evenly, in a measured way. Don't skip over any part of it. Stay in there. It might take you several days, a week, a month to write out the whole thing. Continue to work on it every day until it is finished. — Natalie Goldberg

It was my own human mind. I needed to understand it. Why? It's the writer's landscape. Imagine that a painter has that wild animal to capture on canvas: arresting its fangs, the raging color of its eyes, the blue of it's hump, the flash of its hoofs, the rugged shadow that it casts. We writers have that beast inside us: how we feel, think, hope, dream, perceive. — Natalie Goldberg

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

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

Our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience, and from the decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grinds, and old steak bones out of our minds, come nitrogen, heat, and very fertile soil. Out of this fertile soil bloom our poems and stories. But this does not come all at once. It takes time. Continue to turn over and over the organic details of your life until some of them fall through the garbage of discursive thoughts to the solid ground of black soil. — Natalie Goldberg

Every moment is enormous and it is all we have. — Natalie Goldberg

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

This all happened fifteen years ago. A friend once told me: "Trust in love and it will take you where you need to go." I want to add, "Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go." And don't worry too much about security. You will eventually have a deep security when you begin to do what you want. How many of us with our big salaries are actually secure anyway? — Natalie Goldberg

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

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

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

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

Own anything you want in your writing and then let it go. — Natalie Goldberg

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

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

When you bring the darkness to the table, it doesn't rule you or hurt other people, but when we keep it secret, it's dangerous. — 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

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

Anything we fully do is an alone journey. — Natalie Goldberg

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

At the moment our rational mind stops, hits against a wall ... something else happens. And a bigger mind, like a pearl, rolls in a silver bowl. — 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

In writing practice, there's no direction. You enter your own mind and follow it where it takes you. We have a great need to connect with our own mind and our own true self. And all of us have a story to tell. — 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

In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write. — Natalie Goldberg

Even an ice cream parlor - a definite advantage - does not alleviate the sorrow I feel for a town lacking a bookstore. — Natalie Goldberg

Creativity is no big deal. — Natalie Goldberg

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

Actually, when I look at my old notebooks, I think I have been a bit self-indulgent and have given myself too much time to meander in my discursive thoughts. I could have cut through sooner. Yet it is good to know about our terrible selves, not laud or criticize them, just acknowledge them. Then, out of this knowledge, we are better equipped to make a choice for beauty, kind consideration and clear truth. We make this choice with our feet firmly on the ground. We are not running wildly after beauty with fear at our backs. — Natalie Goldberg

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

Write about "leaving." Approach it any way you want. Write about your divorce, leaving the house this morning, or a friend dying. — Natalie Goldberg

All of us can create if we allow ourselves to. — Natalie Goldberg

When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing. (p.90) — Natalie Goldberg

Women are wonderful, but they get so caught up about their body. We need to unhook from worrying so much. When I don't feel good, I look in the mirror and think I look fat and miserable. But when I feel good and whole, I'm not worried about my body because I'm living in it. It doesn't become an object. — Natalie Goldberg

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

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