Top 186 Quotes & Sayings by Natalie Goldberg

When you are present, the world is truly alive.

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.

Our job as writers is to listen, to come home to the four corners of the earth.

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.

There's no such thing as a writer's block. If you're having trouble writing, well, pick up the pen and write. No matter what, keep that hand moving. Writing is really a physical activity.

Never underestimate people. They do desire the cut of truth.

Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce.

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.

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.

Read books. They are good for us.

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

A writer's job is to give the reader a larger vision of the world.

Women need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There's something about holding that richness.

Failure is what we're all running from, we're always running toward success with failure at our back.

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.

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.

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.

Talk when you talk, walk when you walk, and die when you die.

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.

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

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.

If you feel bored or uncomfortable as you're writing, ask yourself what's bothering you and write about that. Sometimes your creative energy is like water in a kinked hose, and before thoughts can flow on the topic at hand, you have to straighten the hose by attending to whatever is preoccupying you.

I came out with a book called The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language. It's a book that describes how writing is a practice and how my teaching is part of that practice. I direct the writing and create books but underneath, there's always the river of practice happening. No good, no bad. Just do it.

Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce. In summer, we work hard to make a tidy garden, bordered by pansies with rows or clumps of columbine, petunias, bleeding hearts. Then we find ourselves longing for the forest, where everything has the appearance of disorder; yet we feel peaceful there.

Indefinite plans get dubious results.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath.

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.

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

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

Creativity exists in the present moment. You can't find it anywhere else.

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

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.

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

Be tough in the way a blade of grass is: rooted, willing to lean, and at peace with what is around it.

Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.

A writer must say yes to life.

poems are small moments of enlightenment

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

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.

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."

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."

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.

If you're having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down. For me, slowing down has been a tremendous source of creativity. It has allowed me to open up -- to know that there's life under the earth and that I have to let it come through me in a new way. Creativity exists in the present moment. You can't find it anywhere else.

The problem is we think we exist.

Whether we know it or not, we transmit the presence of everyone we have ever known, as though by being in each other's presence we exchange our cells, pass on some of our lifeforce, and then we go on carrying that person in our body, not unlike springtime when certain plants in fields we walk through attach their seeds in the form of small burrs to our socks, our pants, our caps, as if to say, 'Go on, take us with you, carry us to root in another place.' This is how we survive long after we are dead. This is why it is important who we become, because we pass it on.

Great lovers realize that they are what they are in love with.

We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.

Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.

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.

All of us can create if we allow ourselves to.

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.

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.

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.

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.

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