Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Natalie Goldberg
Age: 77
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Table
Tables
Tools
Spend
Stationery
Choose
Uptight
Writing
Carefully
Time
Store
Stores

More quotes by 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
Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.
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
I often wonder if all the writers who are alcoholics drink a lot because they aren't writing. It is not because they are writers that they are drinking, but because they are writers who are not writing.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
We walk through so many myths of each other and ourselves we are so thankful when someone sees us for who we are and accepts us.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make it so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, or drop a jar of applesauce.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Because I've been doing my practice for so long, I knew what to do even under really hard circumstances.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak.
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
Indefinite plans get dubious results.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
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
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
When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
Watch yourself. Every minute we change. It is a great opportunity. At any point, we can step out of our frozen selves and our ideas and begin fresh.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.
Natalie Goldberg
Image
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.
Natalie Goldberg