Quotes by 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. ...”

“You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.”

“As writers we live life twice, like a cow that eats its food once and then regurgitates it to chew and digest it again. We have a second chance at biting into our experience and examining it. ...Th...”

“The responsibility of literatuure is to make people awake, present, alive. If the writer wanders, then the reader, too, will wander.”

“Tell about the quality of light coming in through your window. Jump in and write. Dont worry if it is night and your curtains are closed or you would rather write about the light up northjust write...”

“Begin with I remember. Write lots of small memories. If you fall into one large memory, write that. Just keep going. Dont be concerned if the memory happened five seconds ago or five years ago.”

“Its good to go off and write a novel, but dont stop doing writing practice.”

“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 th...”

“Writers live twice.”

“poems are small moments of enlightenment”

“Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fas as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there's another part of them ...”

“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 writ...”

“What crannies of untouched perception can you explore? What autumn was it that moon entered your life? When was it that you picked blueberries at their quintessential moment? How long did you wait ...”

“I wish I had another chance to write that school composition, 'What I Did Last Summer.' When I wrote it in fifth grade, I was scared and just recorded: 'It was interesting. It was nice. My summer w...”

“Keep your hand moving. (Dont pause to reread the line you have just written. Thats stalling and trying to get control of what youre saying.)”

“Writing... is 90 percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you write, it pours out of you...You don't only listen to the person speaking to you acr...”

“Ninety percent of writing is about listening.”

“Writing is the act of discovery.”

“Dont be tossed away by your monkey mind. You say you want to do somethingI really want to be a writerthen that little voice comes along, but I might not make enough money as a writer. Oh, okay, the...”

“I think talent is like a water table under the earthyou tap it with your effort and it comes through you.”