Writing Down the Bones Quotes

“Writing is 100% listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you write, it pours out of you. if you can capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“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 for your first true bike? Who were your angels? What are you thinking of? Not thinking of? Writing can give you confidence, can train you to wake up.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Write about “leaving.” Approach it any way you want. Write about your divorce, leaving the house this morning, or a friend dying.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Visualize a place that you really love, be there, see the details. Now write about it.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Write in different places—for example, in a laundromat, and pick up on the rhythm of the washing machines. Write at bus stops, in cafés. Write what is going on around you.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Tell about the quality of light coming in through your window. Jump in and write. Don’t worry if it is night and your curtains are closed or you would rather write about the light up north—just write. Go for ten minutes, fifteen, a half hour.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Sit down right now. Give me this moment. Write whatever’s running through you. You might start with “this moment” and end up writing about the gardenia you wore at your wedding seven years ago. That’s fine. Don’t try to control it. Stay present with whatever comes up, and keep your hand moving.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Why else are first thoughts so energizing? Because they have to do with freshness and inspiration. Inspiration means “breathing in.” Breathing in God. You actually become larger than yourself, and first thoughts are present. They are not a cover-up of what is actually happening or being felt. The present is imbued with tremendous energy. It is what is.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. We live and die, age beautifully or full of wrinkles. We wake in the morning, buy yellow cheese, and hope we have enough money to pay for it.
At the same instant, we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all winters we are alive on the earth. 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.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.” And don’t worry too much about security. You will eventually have a deep security when you begin to do what you want.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Being an artist in our society makes us lonely. Everyone else leaves in the morning for work and structured jobs. Artists live outside that built in social system.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“A writer’s job is to make the ordinary come alive, to awaken ourselves to the specialness of simply being”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Lighting a candle helps create a sense of magic.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Writing can be very lonely. Who’s going to read it, who cares about it?”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“We're always thinking we should be writing no matter what else we might be doing. It's not fun. The life of an artist isn't easy. You're never free unless you are doing your art.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“It is very important to go home if you want your work to be whole. You don't have to move in with your parents and collect an allowance, but you must claim where you come from and look deep into it. Come to honor and embrace it, or at least, accept it.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“It’s a lot better to sound like Ernest Hemingway than like Aunt Bethune, who thinks Hallmark greeting cards contain the best poetry in America.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“We must continue to open in the face of tremendous opposition. No one is encouraging us to open and still we must peel away the layers of the heart.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“You’re more interested, finally, in living life again in your writing than in making money. Now, let’s understand—writers do like money; artists, contrary to popular belief, do like to eat. It’s only that money isn’t the driving force. I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time to work at my real work. Think of it. Employers pay salaries for time. That is the basic commodity that human beings have that is valuable. We exchange our time in life for money. Writers stay with the first step—their time—and feel it is valuable even before they get money for it. They hold on to it and aren’t so eager to sell it. It’s like inheriting land from your family. It’s always been in your family: they have always owned it. Someone comes along and wants to buy it. Writers, if they are smart, won’t sell too much of it. They know once it’s sold, they might be able to buy a second car, but there will be no place they can go to sit still, no place to dream on. So it is good to be a little dumb when you want to write. You carry that slow person inside you who needs time; it keeps you from selling it all away. That person will need a place to go and will demand to stare into rain puddles in the rain, usually with no hat on, and to feel the drops on her scalp.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Hear “You are boring” as distant white laundry flapping in the breeze. Eventually”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“The responsibility of literatuure is to make people awake, present, alive. If the writer wanders, then the reader, too, will wander.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“THE BASIC UNIT of writing practice is the timed exercise.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“can’t take myself too seriously when I open”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“You have to give yourself the space to write a lot without a destination,”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“We learn writing by doing it.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“If you missed the mouse today, you'll get it tomorrow. You never leave who you are. If you are a writer when writing, you are also a writer when you are cooking, sleeping, walking. And if you are a mother, a painter, a horse, a giraffe, or a carpenter, you will bring that into your writing, too.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“The terrible thing about public school is they take young children who are natural poets and storytellers and have them read literature and then step away from it and talk "about it".”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Writing is egalitarian; it cuts across geographic, class, gender, and racial lines.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Basically, if you want to become a good writer, you need to do three things. Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. And don't think too much. Just enter the heat of words and sounds and colored sensations and keep your pen moving across the page. If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within