quotes by 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 (Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within)

"We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us. Our details are important. Otherwise, if they are not, we can drop a bomb and it doesn't matter. . . Recording the details of our lives is a stance against bombs with their mass ability to kill, against too much speed and efficiency. A writer must say yes to life, to all of life: the water glasses, the Kemp's half-and-half, the ketchup on the counter. It is not a writer's task to say, "It is dumb to live in a small town or to eat in a café when you can eat macrobiotic at home." Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist – the real truth of who we are: several pounds overweight, the gray, cold street outside, the Christmas tinsel in the showcase, the Jewish writer in the orange booth across from her blond friend who has black children. We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from continuing."
— Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within)

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

"Anything you do fully is an alone journey."
— Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones)

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

"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."
— Natalie Goldberg

"Anything we fully do is an alone journey."
— 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 (Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft)

"Every moment is enormous and it is all we have."
— Natalie Goldberg (Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America)

"Recording the details of our lives is a stance against bombs with their mass ability to kill, against too much speed and efficiency. A writer must say yes to life, to all of life: the water glasses, the Kemp's half-and half, the ketchup on the counter. It is not a writer's task to say, 'It is dumb to live in a small town or to eat in a cafe when you can eat macrobiotic at home.' Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist-the real truth of who we are: several pounds overweight, the gray, cold street outside, the Christmas tinsel in the showcase, the Jewish writer in the orange booth cross from her blond friend who has black children. We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from coming."
— Natalie Goldberg

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

"Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure."
— Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within)

""And don't worry too much about security. You will eventually have a deep security when you begin to do what you want."

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— Natalie Goldberg

"If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you."
— Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within)

"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."
— Natalie Goldberg

"My teachers could have been Jesse James for all the time they stole from me."
— Natalie Goldberg