Quotes from Natalie Goldberg

I consider writing practice a true Zen practice because it all comes back at you. You can't fool anyone because it's on the page.

You don't need to go to a therapist, you don't need to do all kinds of things. If you want to write, you physically have to do it.

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

The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.

I love and care about literature, and great writers are our teachers. You're studying their mind when you read their work.

If you love the work, it will love you back.

I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time at my real work.

Never underestimate people. They do desire the cut of truth.

In a way, the cancer became an ally because it stopped me from running around so much. I was able to settle down and write things I hadn't had a chance to before.

I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.

To stay close and intimate with experience is to stay close to the mind; the nitty gritty mind of the way things really are.

I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.

Never underestimate people. They do desire the cut of truth.

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.

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.

Failure is what we're all running from, we're always running toward success with failure at our back.

Anything you fully do is an alone journey.

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important.

It is odd that we never question the feasibility of a football team practicing long hours for one game; yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice.

Know that you will eventually have to leave everything behind; the writing will demand it of you.

poems are small moments of enlightenment

Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fas as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there's another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives every second at a time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and details.

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.