Quotes from Natalie Goldberg

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.

Jump in, no excuses. Exert the force of your life. Persevere under all circumstances.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

When you draw and pay attention to what is, it's a form of being present. This inspires the mind, makes it happy, and the heart wants to express more.

I think I intuitively suspected that perspective would put me outside the painting. I didn't want that. I wanted to get close to those tables and chairs, to jump in and feel myself dancing with them, even as I sat drawing them. I didn't want things to lie down; I wanted them to come forward, to beckon and call, to be noticed on the paper as I was noticing them in real life. I wanted the viewer to have a direct connection with the objects, to feel as happy as I was in their presence.

We learn writing by doing it.

Real, solid growth and education are slow. Look at a tree. We don't put a seed in the ground and then stick our fingers in the earth and yank up an oak. Everything has its time and is nourished and fed with the rhythms of the sun and moon, the seasons. We are no different, no more special, no less important. We belong on the earth. We grow in the same way as a rock, a snail, a porpoise, or a blade of grass. America has forgotten this.

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.

The ability to put something down—to tell how you feel about an old husband, an old shoe, or the memory of a cheese sandwich on a gray morning in Miami—that moment you can finally align how you feel inside with the words you write; at that moment you are free because you are not fighting those things inside. You have accepted them, become one with them.

But what if you are already sixty, seventy years old, eighty, ninety? Let the thunder roll. You've got something to say. You are alive and you don't know for how long. (None of us really knows for how long.) No matter your age there is a sense of urgency, to make life immediate and relevant.

This kind of balance was more natural to me than perspective. Perspective is a way to make objects "lie down" in a painting. In the Western world, we have a notion that things recede and converge as they go farther away. You're supposed to draw them smaller and at a certain

I remember learning one-point perspective in seventh grade in the one art class I took. The guide lines had to be made just so, and we used rulers as we did in math class. I did everything the teacher said and

Entire wars have been based on our inability to see.

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

Naked Lunch, after the novel by William Burroughs—"a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.

In college in the late sixties, I read almost exclusively male writers, usually dead, from England and the rest of Europe. They were very far removed from my daily life, and though I loved them, none of them reflected my experience. I must have subconsciously surmised that writing was not within my ken. It never occurred to me to write, though I secretly wanted to marry a poet.

The restaurant was called Naked Lunch, after the novel by William Burroughs—"a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.

Walking home from work that night, I stopped in the Centicore Bookstore on State Street and wandered up and down the aisles. I saw a thin volume of poetry entitled Fruits and Vegetables by Erica Jong. (Jong had not come out with her novel Fear of Flying yet and was still unknown.) The first poem I opened to in the book was about cooking an eggplant!

Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life. If you receive instructions on how to set a broken bone in your ankle, you can't use those same instructions to fill a cavity in your teeth.

When I teach a class, I want the students to be "writing down the bones," the essential, awake speech of their minds. But I also know I can't just say, "Okay, write clearly and with great honesty." In class we try different techniques or methods. Eventually, the students hit the mark, come home to what they need to say and how they need to say it.

Relax as you read and absorb it, as by osmosis, with your whole body and mind. And don't just read it. Write. Trust yourself. Learn your own needs. Use this book.

okay. Give yourself a lot of space in which to explore writing. A cheap spiral notebook lets you feel that you can fill it quickly and afford another. Also, it is easy to carry. (I often buy notebook-size purses.) Garfield, the Muppets, Mickey Mouse, Star Wars. I use notebooks with funny covers. They come out fresh in September when school starts. They are a quarter more than the plain spirals, but I like them.

I have found that when I am writing something emotional, I must write it the first time directly with hand on paper. Handwriting is more connected to the movement of the heart.

Begin to write in the dumb, awkward way an animal cries out in pain, and there you will find your intelligence, your words, your voice.