Natalie Goldberg Quotes - Page 7

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

When we write we begin to taste the texture of our own mind

When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.

keep your hand moving

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.

Talk when you talk, walk when you walk, and die when you die.

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

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

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

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.

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

Never underestimate people. They do desire the cut of truth.

Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.

The odd thing is, that I wrote The Great Spring while I had cancer and it's not about cancer. It was after I was done with cancer that I wrote a book about it.

I read Eve Ensler and thought it was fabulous. Not only that, but it was really the only thing I could relate to about cancer.

You don't need to go to a therapist, you don't need to do all kinds of things. If you want to write, you physically have to do it.

Understand that writing is like an athletic activity. To play tennis well, you expect to keep practicing, but for some reason with writing, you think you should come out fresh the first time.

I consider writing a legitimate Zen practice.

Shut up and write. Don't talk about writing, just physically do it.

Really you don't need more information. If you've lived twenty years, you probably have enough material for the rest of your life

I love and care about literature, and great writers are our teachers. You're studying their mind when you read their work.

I think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.

Friends open the door for me to write. Then I get paid attention to and it allows me to write other books. The Great Spring and the thirtieth anniversary of Bones just came out and while I'm happy and excited about that, I've already finished a new book. That's what practice does. You don't get caught.

I have students that I tell, "If your book doesn't sell or you can't publish it, write another book. Quit sitting around." The publishing world is a business, but it's not any big deal. An editor is not your guru. Your agent is not your guru.

I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.