Long Quiet Highway Quotes

“Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America

“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 life force, and then we go on carrying that other 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.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America

“When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing.” (p.90)”
― Natalie Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America

“Tibetan Buddhists say that a person should never get rid of their negative energy, that negative energy transformed is the energy of enlightenment, and that the only difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle. If we stop struggling and open up and accept what is, that neurotic energy naturally arises as wisdom, naturally informs us and becomes our teacher.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America

“Real, solid growth and education are slow. Look at a tree. We don’t put a seed in the ground and then stick our fingers in the earth and yank up an oak. Everything has its time and is nourished and fed with the rhythms of the sun and moon, the seasons. We are no different, no more special, no less important. We belong on the earth. We grow in the same way as a rock, a snail, a porpoise, or a blade of grass. America has forgotten this.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America

“Writing became a tool I used to digest my life and understand, finally, the grace, the gratitude I could feel, not because everything was hunky-dory, but because we can use everything we are.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America

“My desolation was that no one knew me and I did not know myself. My family's life was my life. I knew nothing else. I was clothed, fed, given a bed to sleep in, encouraged to marry early and rich, and loved in a generic way -- I was "the big one," which meant the older and my sister was the 'little one" --but no one spoke to me, no one explained anything.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America

“Why did I have to choose? I don’t know if we do really choose. Eventually, I think, something chooses us and we shut up, surrender, and go with it.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America