Natalie Goldberg

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.

Be tough in the way a blade of grass is rooted willing to lean and at peace with what is around it.

A writer must say yes to life.

That's very nice if they want to publish you, but don't pay too much attention to it. It will toss you away. Just continue to write.

A writer's job is to give the reader a larger vision of the world.

Our job as writers is to listen, to come home to the four corners of the earth.

Stress is a confused state. It believes that everything is an emergency.

Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.

I feel that 'The Great Failure' is really a book written out of great love and a willingness to face all of who a human being is.

Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce.

Women are wonderful, but they get so caught up about their body. We need to unhook from worrying so much. When I don't feel good, I look in the mirror and think I look fat and miserable. But when I feel good and whole, I'm not worried about my body because I'm living in it. It doesn't become an object.

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

There's no such thing as a writer's block. If you're having trouble writing, well, pick up the pen and write. No matter what, keep that hand moving. Writing is really a physical activity.

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.

Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth a forgetting of the breath.

When you bring the darkness to the table, it doesn't rule you or hurt other people, but when we keep it secret, it's dangerous.

The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.

Wait until you are hungry to say something until there is an aching in you to speak.

Women need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There's something about holding that richness.

The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.

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

If you feel bored or uncomfortable as you're writing, ask yourself what's bothering you and write about that. Sometimes your creative energy is like water in a kinked hose, and before thoughts can flow on the topic at hand, you have to straighten the hose by attending to whatever is preoccupying you.

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

This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.

Read books. They are good for us.

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.

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.

When you are present, the world is truly alive.

We are each a concert reverberating with our whole lives and reflecting and amplifying the world around us.

Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it

Failure is what we're all running from, we're always running toward success with failure at our back.

Whether you're keeping a journal or writing as a meditation, it's the same thing. What's important is you're having a relationship with your mind.

Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.

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