Top 200 Natalie Goldberg Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “We shouldn’t forget that the universe moves with us, is at our back with everything we do.”

— Natalie Goldberg

52. “One poem or story doesn’t matter one way or the other. It’s the process of writing and life that matters.”

— Natalie Goldberg

53. “The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.”

— Natalie Goldberg

54. “The only failure in writing is when you stop doing it. Then you fail yourself.”

— Natalie Goldberg

55. “All of us can create if we allow ourselves to.”

— Natalie Goldberg

56. “Use loneliness. Its ache creates urgency to reconnect with the world. Take that aching and use it to propel you deeper into your need for expression – to speak, to say who you are.”

— Natalie Goldberg

57. “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.”

— Natalie Goldberg

58. “This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don’t wait.”

— Natalie Goldberg

59. “Katagiri Roshi says: “Poor artists. They suffer very much. They finish a masterpiece and they are not satisfied. They want to go on and do another.” Yes, but it’s better to go on and do another if you have the urge than to start drinking and become alcoholic or eat a pound of good fudge and get fat.”

— Natalie Goldberg

60. “Original details are very ordinary, except to the mind that sees extraordinariness. it’s not that we need to go to the Hopi mesas to see greatness; we need to view what we already have in a different way.”

— Natalie Goldberg

61. “The aim is to burn through to first thoughts, to the place where energy is unobstructed by social politeness or the internal censor, to the place where you are writing what you mind actually sees and feels, not what it thinks it should see or feel.”

— Natalie Goldberg

62. “Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.”

— Natalie Goldberg

63. “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.”

— Natalie Goldberg

64. “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.”

— Natalie Goldberg

65. “When you write what you know, you stay in control. One of the first things I encourage my writing students to do is to lose control – say what they want to say, break structure.”

— Natalie Goldberg

66. “We are each a concert reverberating with our whole lives and reflecting and amplifying the world around us.”

— Natalie Goldberg

67. “Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning. We should not be ashamed of this. It is good. It’s like drinking water.”

— Natalie Goldberg

68. “I remember a friend many years ago who had taped a sign to his refrigerator: There’s a dream dreaming us. If you try to think about what that means it makes your mind silly, but that silliness is good.”

— Natalie Goldberg

69. “We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. It is our minds that either open or close.”

— Natalie Goldberg

70. “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.”

— Natalie Goldberg

71. “Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth...”

— Natalie Goldberg

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

— Natalie Goldberg

73. “The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.”

— Natalie Goldberg

74. “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.”

— Natalie Goldberg

75. “Watch yourself. Every minute we change. It is a great opportunity. At any point, we can step out of our frozen selves and our ideas and begin fresh.”

— Natalie Goldberg

76. “Miyamoto Musashi’s actual burial ground was in close range. According to legend he had been buried in full samurai regalia clutching his faithful sword. The last line of the translation: He died lonely. The Japanese liked loneliness. It had a different quality than our dreaded isolation. More like one with the void, alone with the Alone, no longer separate from anything. It was the final compliment to describe him this way.”

— Natalie Goldberg

77. “The problem is we think we exist.”

— Natalie Goldberg

78. “It’s pretty nice to be talented. If you are, enjoy, but it won’t take you that far. Work takes you a lot further.”

— Natalie Goldberg

79. “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.”

— Natalie Goldberg

80. “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 again and collect a weekly allowance, but you must claim where you come from and look deep into it. Come to honor and embrace it, or at the least, accept it.”

— Natalie Goldberg

81. “Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.”

— Natalie Goldberg

82. “Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don’t make it any harder on yourself.”

— Natalie Goldberg

83. “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.”

— Natalie Goldberg

84. “We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.”

— Natalie Goldberg

85. “A responsibility of literature is to make people awake, present, alive. If the writer wanders, then the reader, too, will wander.”

— Natalie Goldberg

86. “Oh, my passion! That is what finally carried me through. Let passion burn all the way, heating up every layer of the psyche.”

— Natalie Goldberg

87. “Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak.”

— Natalie Goldberg

88. “Our job as writers is to listen, to come home to the four corners of the earth.”

— Natalie Goldberg

89. “Never underestimate people. They do desire the cut of truth.”

— Natalie Goldberg

90. “Great lovers realize that they are what they are in love with.”

— Natalie Goldberg

91. “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.”

— Natalie Goldberg

92. “When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn’t leave you.”

— Natalie Goldberg

93. “Ultimately, writing is about trusting your own mind. It is an act of discovery.”

— Natalie Goldberg

94. “In the West, a teacher imparts knowledge to a student. In the East, a teacher transmits nothing more or less than his or her Being.”

— Natalie Goldberg

95. “In the past few years I’ve assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people – people who supposedly want to write – read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them.”

— Natalie Goldberg

96. “Literature gives us the great gift of the present moment.”

— Natalie Goldberg

97. “Women need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There’s something about holding that richness.”

— Natalie Goldberg

98. “The harder you chase something, the faster you go and the less you’re able to let life meet life. If you’re having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down...”

— Natalie Goldberg

99. “Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth.”

— Natalie Goldberg

100. “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.”

— Natalie Goldberg