01c. 1948 ADTell about the quality of light coming in through your window. Jump in and write. Don’t worry if it is night and your curtains are closed or you would rather write about the light up north—just write. Go for ten minutes, fifteen, a half hour.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
02c. 1948 ADBegin with “I remember.” Write lots of small memories. If you fall into one large memory, write that. Just keep going. Don’t be concerned if the memory happened five seconds ago or five years ago.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
03c. 1948 ADOf course, we are drawn to teachers who unconsciously mirror our own psychology. None of us are clean. We all make mistakes. It's the repetition of those mistakes and the refusal to look at them that compound the suffering and assure their continuation.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
06c. 1948 ADIt’s good to go off and write a novel, but don’t stop doing writing practice.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
07c. 1948 ADWriters live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fas as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there's another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives every second at a time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and details.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
08c. 1948 ADWriting, too, is 90 percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you wrote, it pours out of you. If you can capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else. You don't only listen to the air, the chair, and the door. And go beyond the door. Take in the sound of the season, the sound of the color coming in through the windows. Listen to the past, future, and present right where you are. Listen with your whole body, not only with your ears, but with your hands, your face, and the back of your neck. Listening is receptivity. The deeper you can listen, the better you can write. You can take in the way things are without judgment, and the next day you can write the truth about the way things are."...If you can capture the way things are that's all the poetry you ever need.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
09c. 1948 ADWhat crannies of untouched perception can you explore? What autumn was it that moon entered your life? When was it that you picked blueberries at their quintessential moment? How long did you wait for your first true bike? Who were your angels? What are you thinking of? Not thinking of? Writing can give you confidence, can train you to wake up.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
10c. 1948 ADI wish I had another chance to write that school composition, 'What I Did Last Summer.' When I wrote it in fifth grade, I was scared and just recorded: 'It was interesting. It was nice. My summer was fun.' I snuck through with a B grade. But I still wondered, How do you really do that? Now it is obvious. You tell the truth and you depict it in detail: 'My mother dyed her hair red and polished her toenails silver. I was mad for Parcheesi and running the sprinkler catching beetles in a mason jar and feeding them grass. My father sat at the kitchen table a lot staring straight ahead, never talking, a Budweiser in his hand.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
11c. 1948 ADKeep your hand moving. (Don’t pause to reread the line you have just written. That’s stalling and trying to get control of what you’re saying.)Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
13c. 1948 ADWriting... is 90 percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you write, it pours out of you...You don't only listen to the person speaking to you across the table, but simultaneously listen to the air, the chair, and the door. And go beyond the door. Take in the sound of the season, the sound of the color coming in through the windows. Listen to the past, future, and present right where you are. Listen with your whole body, not only with your ears, but with your hands, your face, and the back of your neck.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
15c. 1948 ADDon’t be tossed away by your monkey mind. You say you want to do something—“I really want to be a writer”—then that little voice comes along, “but I might not make enough money as a writer.” “Oh, okay, then I won’t write.” That’s being tossed away. These little voices are constantly going to be nagging us. If you make a decision to do something, you do it. Don’t be tossed away. But part of not being tossed away is understanding your mind, not believing it so much when it comes up with all these objections and then loads you with all these insecurities and reasons not to do something.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
16c. 1948 ADI think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
17c. 1948 ADSit down right now. Give me this moment. Write whatever’s running through you. You might start with “this moment” and end up writing about the gardenia you wore at your wedding seven years ago. That’s fine. Don’t try to control it. Stay present with whatever comes up, and keep your hand moving.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
18c. 1948 AD...and though death is howling at our backs and life is roaring at our faces, we can just begin to write, simply begin to write what we have to say.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
19c. 1948 ADStress 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.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
20c. 1948 ADLife 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.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
21c. 1948 ADThere is no security no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago we will do it again. Actually every time we begin we wonder how we ever did it before.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
22c. 1948 ADFailure is what we're all running from, we're always running toward success with failure at our back.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
23c. 1948 ADWomen need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There's something about holding that richness.Natalie Goldberg / quote ↗
