Quotes from Natalie Goldberg

Our ideas and intentions can mask and cover up a story; there is a life force that will declare itself if you let it. Get out of the way.

First thoughts have tremendous energy. It is the way the mind first flashes on something. The internal censor usually squelches them, so we live in the realm of second and third thoughts, thoughts on thought, twice and three times removed from the direct connection of the first fresh flash.

Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.

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

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

I write because I am alone and move through the world alone. No one will know what has passed through me... I write because there are stories that people have forgotten to tell, because I am a woman trying to stand up in my life... I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay; how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only real home I'll ever have.

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.

Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.

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.

Anything we fully do is an alone journey.

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

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

Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it

Anything you do fully is an alone journey.

I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.

Writers are great lovers. They fall in love with other writers. That's how they learn to write. They take on a writer, read everything by him or her, read it over again until they understand how the writer moves, pauses, and sees. That's what being a lover is: stepping out of yourself, stepping into someone else's skin.

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.

Writing is the act of discovery.

Handwriting is more connected to the movement of the heart.

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.

After you have finished a piece of work, the work is then none of your business. Go on and do something else.

Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.

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.

I remember a friend many years ago who had taped a sign to his refrigerator: There's a dream dreaming us. If you try to think about what that means it makes your mind silly, but that silliness is good.