Natalie Goldberg Quotes

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"Read books. They are good for us."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"After all those years as a woman hearing 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm enough.'"