Quotes from Natalie Goldberg

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.

We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from continuing.

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.

Dreams are another slice of reality, not different from where we are now—they just tell about it in a different way. They also can open up your reality. They don't have the constraints of conscious logic.

Yet it is good to know about our terrible selves, not laud or criticize them, just acknowledge them. Then, out of this knowledge, we are better equipped to make a choice for beauty, kind consideration, and clear truth. We make this choice with our feet firmly on the ground. We are not running wildly after beauty with fear at our backs.

this quiet place exists as we exist, here on the earth. It just is. That is where the best writing comes from and what we must connect with in order to write well.

Hear "You are boring" as distant white laundry flapping in the breeze. Eventually

To read and to write is to be empowered. No shackle can ultimately hold you.

It is also hard to write about a city we just moved to; it's not yet in our body.

Lighting a candle helps create a sense of magic.

and though death is howling at our backs and life is roaring at our faces, we can just begin to write, simply begin to write what we have to say.

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.

That dead feeling hits hard and permeates the first year. It comes back to test you often in the following years, but if you get through the first year, then you know about it. It will never have the power to defeat you again.

the artist and the alcoholic have parallel paths. They both go into the darkness, but the alcoholic gets stuck there. The artist (if she is not also addicted) goes into the darkness and is transformed by the experience and comes out more alive.

Writing can be very lonely. Who's going to read it, who cares about it?

It was my own human mind. I needed to understand it. Why? It's the writer's landscape. Imagine that a painter has that wild animal to capture on canvas: arresting its fangs, the raging color of its eyes, the blue of it's hump, the flash of its hoofs, the rugged shadow that it casts. We writers have that beast inside us: how we feel, think, hope, dream, perceive.

The responsibility of literatuure is to make people awake, present, alive. If the writer wanders, then the reader, too, will wander.

can't take myself too seriously when I open

Own anything you want in your writing and then let it go.

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.

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.

WRITE EVERYTHING YOU know about dying. Just go. Don't think, "What does she mean by that?" Dive in. We die in all kinds of ways. Who died? When did they die? how? why?

SIT DOWN WITH THE plan to write something you have always wanted to write but have never managed to get around to. This time, though, you are not timing yourself. You are sitting down with the determination to write it through, even if it takes all afternoon or night. Relax and ease into it. Promise yourself you'll burn through, put the real stuff down, and not get in your own way.

Once you connect with your mind, you are who you are and you're free.