Natalie Goldberg
35 quotes
Biography
Natalie Goldberg is an American popular author and speaker. She is best known for a series of books which explore writing as Zen practice.
"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."
"Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure."
"Anything we fully do is an alone journey."
"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."
"Writing practice brings us back to the uniqueness of our own minds and an acceptance of it. We all have wild dreams, fantasies, and ordinary thoughts. Let us to feel the texture of them and not be afraid of them.Writing is still the wildest thing I know."
"You tell the truth and you depict it in detail."
"I went home with the resolve to write what I knew and to trust my own thoughts and feelings and to not look outside myself. I was not in school anymore: I could say what I wanted."
"Of course, you can sit down and have something you want to say. But then you must let its expression be born in you and on the paper. Don't hold too tight; allow it to come out how it needs to rather than trying to control it."
"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."
"In a rainstorm, everyone quickly runs down the street with umbrellas, raincoats, newspapers over their heads. Writers go back outside in the rain with a notebook in front of them and a pen in hand. They look at the puddles, watch them fill, watch the rain splash in them."
"Writers move with grace in and out of many worlds."
"As writers we have to walk in the world in touch with that present, alert part of ourselves, that animal sense part that looks, sees, and notices - street signs, corners, fire hydrants, newspaper stands."
"If you want a room to write in, just get a room. Don't make a big production out of it. If it doesn't leak, has a window, heat in the winter, then put in your desk, bookshelves, a soft chair, and start writing."
"Push yourself beyond when you think you are done with what you have to say. […] It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out."
"See the big picture. You are committed to writing or finding out about it. Continue under all circumstances. Don't be rigid though."
"Anything we fully do is an alone journey. […] You are alone when you write a book. Accept that and take in any love and support that is given to you, but don't have expectations of how it is supposed to be."
"Failure is what we're all running from, we're always running toward success with failure at our back."
"I feel that 'The Great Failure' is really a book written out of great love and a willingness to face all of who a human being is."
"Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go."
"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."
"Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go."
"Never underestimate people. They do desire the cut of truth."
"Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it"
"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."