Latest Natalie Goldberg Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Writing, Hands, Paper

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• You don't know what you're doing. You're just hoping that people won't make fun of you. I had no idea how it would turn out.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Fun, Ideas, People

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• Friends open the door for me to write. Then I get paid attention to and it allows me to write other books. The Great Spring and the thirtieth anniversary of Bones just came out and while I'm happy and excited about that, I've already finished a new book. That's what practice does. You don't get caught.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Spring, Book, Writing

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• I have students that I tell, "If your book doesn't sell or you can't publish it, write another book. Quit sitting around." The publishing world is a business, but it's not any big deal. An editor is not your guru. Your agent is not your guru.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Book, Writing, Editors

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• I think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Fun, Book, Thinking

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• 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

  Taken, Angel, Thinking

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• I love and care about literature, and great writers are our teachers. You're studying their mind when you read their work.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Teacher, Mind, Literature

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• The first thing is how awful cancer was, the experience. When you first go through it, you're just trying to survive. But when I wrote about it, I really digested it. It was unbearable but I had practice behind me.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Cancer, Practice, Trying

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• So even though I couldn't bear writing about cancer, I faced it every day.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Cancer, Writing, Bears

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• Because I've been doing my practice for so long, I knew what to do even under really hard circumstances.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Practice, Long, Circumstances

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• In a way, the cancer became an ally because it stopped me from running around so much. I was able to settle down and write things I hadn't had a chance to before.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Running, Cancer, Writing

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• 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

  Cancer, Writing, Mean

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• While I had cancer, I wrote these twenty-two personal essays about how I lived my life backed by Zen and writing.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Cancer, Writing, Two

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• 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

  Father, Practice, Japan

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• The odd thing is, that I wrote The Great Spring while I had cancer and it's not about cancer. It was after I was done with cancer that I wrote a book about it.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Spring, Cancer, Book

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• 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

  Cancer, Fabulous, Relate

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

• Really you don't need more information. If you've lived twenty years, you probably have enough material for the rest of your life

  Natalie Goldberg

  Years, Twenties, Needs

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19,2016.

• I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Cancer, Months, Fourteen

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• You don't need to go to a therapist, you don't need to do all kinds of things. If you want to write, you physically have to do it.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Writing, Needs, Want

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• 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

  Writing, Thinking, Play

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• 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

  Teaching, Book, Writing

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• Shut up and write. Don't talk about writing, just physically do it.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Writing, Shut Up

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• I consider writing a legitimate Zen practice.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Writing, Practice

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• I don't know anything but writing practice, and so what I really do is direct that energy as if it were flowing down a river.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Writing, Practice, Rivers

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

• Let's say I've directed that [writing] energy into writing my latest book but suddenly, I really want to write about an onion. I don't say to myself, "No, you have stay on the subject," because I know that the longer I stay on the subject the more boring I get. So, if my mind wants to write about an onion, it might be a deeper way to go into what I'm working on, even though it might seem irrelevant. This is how I've learned to follow my mind.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Book, Writing, Mind

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com