After you have finished a piece of work, the work is then none of your business. Go on and do something else.

— Natalie Goldberg

...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

Anything we fully do is an alone journey.

— Natalie Goldberg

As writers, we live life twice, like a cow that eats its food once and then regurgitates it to chew and digest it again. We have a second chance at biting into our experience and examining it. ... This is our life, and it's not going to last forever. There isn't time to talk about someday writing that short story or poem or novel. Slow down now, touch what is around you, and out of care and compassion for each moment and detail, put pen to paper and begin to write.

— Natalie Goldberg

Begin 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

Don’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

Dreams are another slice of reality, not different from where we are now—they just tell about it differently. They also can open up your reality. They don’t have the constraints of conscious logic.

— Natalie Goldberg

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

— Natalie Goldberg

I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.

— Natalie Goldberg

If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.

— Natalie Goldberg