Quotes from Natalie Goldberg

Choose your tools carefully, but not so carefully that you get uptight or spend more time at the stationery store than at your writing table.

While I had cancer, I wrote these twenty-two personal essays about how I lived my life backed by Zen and writing.

Really you don't need more information. If you've lived twenty years, you probably have enough material for the rest of your life

It is simply that person's time. Ours will come in this lifetime or the next. No matter. Continue to practice.

To encounter a fine book and have time to read it is a wonderful thing.

There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again. Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before.

Understand that writing is like an athletic activity. To play tennis well, you expect to keep practicing, but for some reason with writing, you think you should come out fresh the first time.

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

Women are wonderful, but they get so caught up about their body. We need to unhook from worrying so much. When I don't feel good, I look in the mirror and think I look fat and miserable. But when I feel good and whole, I'm not worried about my body because I'm living in it. It doesn't become an object.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world.

Great lovers realize that they are what they are in love with.

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.

Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.

I honor English majors. It's a dumb thing to major in. It leads nowhere. It's good to be dumb, it allows us to love something for no reason. That's the best kind of love.

I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.

When you are present, the world is truly alive.

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.

Too often we take notes on writing, we think about writing but never do it. I want you to walk into the heart of the storm, written words dripping off hair, eyelids, hanging from hands.

I'm never ashamed to read a book twice or as many times as I want. We never expect to drink a glass of water just once in our lives. A book can be that essential, too.