Suzuki Roshi once said to his Sixties American students that the way they dressed- with beads, long hair, brightly colored clothes-they all looked alike. Shave your heads, wear black robes, he said- Ah, now I can see your uniqueness. Our ideas and intentions can mask and cover up a story; there is a life force that will declare itself if you let it. Get out of the way.

— Natalie Goldberg

Natalie Goldberg Quotes

Ninety percent of writing is about listening.

— Natalie Goldberg

We must continue to open in the face of tremendous opposition. No one is encouraging us to open and still we must peel away the layers of the heart.

— Natalie Goldberg

My desolation was that no one knew me and I did not know myself. My family’s life was my life. I knew nothing else. I was clothed, fed, given a bed to sleep in, encouraged to marry early and rich, and loved in a generic way – I was “the big one,” which meant the older and my sister was the ‘little one” – but no one spoke to me, no one explained anything.

— Natalie Goldberg

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

— Natalie Goldberg

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.

— Natalie Goldberg

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.

— Natalie Goldberg

Lighting a candle helps create a sense of magic.

— Natalie Goldberg

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

— Natalie Goldberg

Reach out of the deep chasm of your loneliness and express yourself to another human being.

— Natalie Goldberg

It’s a lot better to sound like Ernest Hemingway than like Aunt Bethune, who thinks Hallmark greeting cards contain the best poetry in America.

— Natalie Goldberg

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

— Natalie Goldberg

Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth, and it spreads out from the page into all of our life, and it should.

— Natalie Goldberg

We have lived! Our moments are important. This is what it is to be a writer: to be the carrier of details that make up history.

— Natalie Goldberg

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.

— Natalie Goldberg

A writer’s job is to make the ordinary come alive, to awaken ourselves to the specialness of simply being.

— Natalie Goldberg

Writing is egalitarian; it cuts across geographic, class, gender, and racial lines.

— Natalie Goldberg

The terrible thing about public school is they take young children who are natural poets and storytellers and have them read literature and then step away from it and talk “about it”.

— 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.

— Natalie Goldberg

We learn writing by doing it.

— Natalie Goldberg

Suzuki Roshi once said to his Sixties American students that the way they dressed- with beads, long hair, brightly colored clothes-they all looked alike. Shave your heads, wear black robes, he said- Ah, now I can see your uniqueness. Our ideas and intentions can mask and cover up a story; there is a life force that will declare itself if you let it. Get out of the way.

— Natalie Goldberg
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