Top 200 Natalie Goldberg Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.”

— Natalie Goldberg

2. “Shut up and write anyway. Don’t use anything as an excuse.”

— Natalie Goldberg

3. “Writing is the act of discovery.”

— Natalie Goldberg

4. “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.”

— Natalie Goldberg

5. “In writing practice, there’s no direction. You enter your own mind and follow it where it takes you. We have a great need to connect with our own mind and our own true self. And all of us have a story to tell.”

— Natalie Goldberg

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

— Natalie Goldberg

7. “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.”

— Natalie Goldberg

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

— Natalie Goldberg

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

— Natalie Goldberg

10. “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.”

— Natalie Goldberg

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

11. “Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.”

— Natalie Goldberg

12. “Writing is the crack through which you can crawl into a bigger world, into your wild mind.”

— Natalie Goldberg

13. “Handwriting is more connected to the movement of the heart.”

— Natalie Goldberg

14. “Be tough in the way a blade of grass is: rooted, willing to lean, and at peace with what is around it.”

— Natalie Goldberg

15. “Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go. And don’t worry too much about security. You will eventually have a deep security when you begin to do what you want.”

— Natalie Goldberg

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

— Natalie Goldberg

17. “Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.”

— Natalie Goldberg

18. “When you are present, the world is truly alive.”

— Natalie Goldberg

19. “Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.”

— Natalie Goldberg

20. “This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it.”

— Natalie Goldberg

21. “When you write, don’t say, “I’m going to write a poem.” That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself; say, “I am free to write the worst junk in the world.””

— Natalie Goldberg

22. “Failure is what we’re all running from, we’re always running toward success with failure at our back.”

— Natalie Goldberg

23. “Anything we fully do is an alone journey.”

— Natalie Goldberg

24. “In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.”

— Natalie Goldberg

25. “Have compassion for yourself when you write. There is no failure – just a big field to wander in.”

— Natalie Goldberg

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

— Natalie Goldberg

27. “Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we did it before, Each time is a new journey with no maps.”

— Natalie Goldberg

28. “First thoughts have tremendous energy. 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.”

— Natalie Goldberg

29. “If you love the work, it will love you back.”

— Natalie Goldberg

30. “Creativity exists in the present moment. You can’t find it anywhere else.”

— Natalie Goldberg

31. “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.”

— Natalie Goldberg

32. “I think talent is like a water table under the earth – you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.”

— Natalie Goldberg

33. “Writing is not a McDonald’s Hamburger...”

— Natalie Goldberg

34. “We should notice that we are already supported at every moment. There is the earth below our feet and there is the air, filling our lungs and emptying them. We should begin from this when we need support.”

— Natalie Goldberg

35. “I am free to write the worst junk in the world.”

— Natalie Goldberg

36. “Be awake to the details around you, but don’t be self-conscious.”

— Natalie Goldberg

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

— Natalie Goldberg

38. “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.”

— Natalie Goldberg

39. “A writer must say yes to life.”

— Natalie Goldberg

40. “Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.”

— Natalie Goldberg

41. “In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write.”

— Natalie Goldberg

42. “Finally, if you want to write, you have to just shut up, pick up a pen, and do it. I’m sorry there are no true excuses. This is our life. Step forward. Maybe it’s only for ten minutes. That’s okay. To write feels better than all the excuses.”

— Natalie Goldberg

43. “Indefinite plans get dubious results.”

— Natalie Goldberg

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

— Natalie Goldberg

45. “Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath.”

— Natalie Goldberg

46. “Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.”

— Natalie Goldberg

47. “And we can’t avoid an inch of our own experience; if we do it causes a blur, a bleep, a puffy unreality. Our job is to wake up to everything, because if we slow down enough, we see that we are everything.”

— Natalie Goldberg

48. “The things that make you a functional citizen in society – manners, discretion, cordiality – don’t necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners...”

— Natalie Goldberg

49. “The positive thing about writing is that you connect with yourself in the deepest way. You get a chance to know who you are, to know what you think. You begin to have a relationship with your mind.”

— Natalie Goldberg

50. “You’ll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.”

— Natalie Goldberg

Featured in: Quotes About Stories