Quote

Writing is not a McDonald's Hamburger.

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
Hamburger
Mcdonald
Hamburgers
Writing

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

Image
I honor English majors. It's a dumb thing to major in. It leads nowhere. It's good to be dumb, it allows us to love something for no reason. That's the best kind of love.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
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
Image
This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
I think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.
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
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
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
Anything we fully do is an alone journey.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Creativity is no big deal.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Clarity and perseverance are difficult in American society because the basis of capitalism is greed and dissatisfaction.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
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
Image
One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
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.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Wherein we discover that many of the rules for good writing and good sex are the same: Keep your hand moving, lose control, and don't think.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
If I didn't have that, fear and projections over what was coming next could have taken over. But it was tough. Don't think I was an angel. It was hell.
Natalie Goldberg