Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Ashamed
Drinking
Beginning
Water
Back
Good
Like

More quotes by 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
I don't mean to be flippant about cancer - it was hard, it was tough and it was scary. Then my next manuscript was about cancer because I had a whole new topic to write about. And because I wrote, it didn't take over. Writing took the chaos out of cancer.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Anything we fully do is an alone journey.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
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
Image
I told all kinds of stories about going to Japan, about playing ball with my father... I wanted to record my life in case it was going to end soon. So, I wrote that and it was very comforting to have that practice in the afternoons in my living room. I just wrote about my life.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
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
Image
Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
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
Image
Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
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
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
When you write, don't say, I'm going to write a poem. That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself say, I am free to write the worst junk in the world.
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
As writers we need to crack open language.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. It is our minds that either open or close.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
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
Image
I came out with a book called The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language. It's a book that describes how writing is a practice and how my teaching is part of that practice. I direct the writing and create books but underneath, there's always the river of practice happening. No good, no bad. Just do it.
Natalie Goldberg