Quote

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.

Natalie Goldberg

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
States
Witty
Stressors
Everything
Tension
Disconnection
Believe
Relief
Lifeboats
Ignorant
Emergency
Stress
Emergencies
State
Stressful
Funny
Relaxation
Inspirational
Believes
Burnout

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

Image
I wonder if I don't give too much of myself to writing: I am always half where I am the other half is feeding the furnace, kick-starting the heat of creativity. I am making love with someone but at the same time I'm noticing how this graceful hand across my belly might just fit in with the memory of lilacs in Albuquerque in 1974.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
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.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
poems are small moments of enlightenment
Natalie Goldberg
Image
While I had cancer, I wrote these twenty-two personal essays about how I lived my life backed by Zen and writing.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
We have to accept ourselves in order to write. Now none of us does that fully: few of us do it even halfway. Don’t wait for one hundred percent acceptance of yourself before you write, or even eight percent acceptance. Just write. The process of writing is an activity that teaches us about acceptance.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
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
Image
The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Creativity is no big deal.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
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
Image
Even an ice cream parlor - a definite advantage - does not alleviate the sorrow I feel for a town lacking a bookstore.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Shut up and write. Don't talk about writing, just physically do it.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
[T]he one thing I want for you is to recognize when you are really singing in writing practice and honor that. Trust that. When you were screaming on the page. Maybe that doesn't make a whole book but that is the true seed.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
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
Image
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
Image
This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.
Natalie Goldberg