Natalie Goldberg Quotes

Talent is long patience.

We work in the dark -- we do what we can -- we give what we have.

You do your best with the realization that nothing gets you in ring-shape better than being in the ring.

I will repeat a technique until it is mastered, no matter when that will be. One certainty though: it will be.

It’s not going to be easy to proceed. There are going to be barriers, difficulties, hardships, failures - it’s inevitable. But unless the spirit of the last year, here and elsewhere in the country and around the globe, unless that continues to grow and becomes a major force in the social and political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.

Braving obstacles and hardships is nobler than retreat to tranquility. The butterfly that hovers around the lamp until it dies is more admirable than the mole that lives in a dark tunnel.

There are times when you simply have to righteous hang on and outlast the devil.

When you are going through hell, keep on going. Never never never give up.

The stuff I do, I do every day, and I've been doing it for long periods of time. I don't start and quit-ever. I start and stay on it.

No matter where you go, poor people have the capacity to endure. Some people even compliment us on it, as if endurance is all we can achieve.

Everything always gets crazy at the end. You just have to keep going, regardless of how awful it gets. So that's what I do.

Life doesn't reward the naturally clever or strong but those who can learn to fight and work hard and never quit.

With patience and calm, persistence and stoicism, good handwriting and careful labeling, they would meet persecution, indignity, and hardship head-on.

Not art and science only, but patience will be required for the work.

My parents taught me as a kid: do your work. Do it well. Try as hard as you can, whatever it is. It will one day, for the long run, it will make some sort of change somewhere.

Whoever wishes to go down a long path, must learn that the first lesson is to overcome early disappointments.

The trick at every turn was to endure the test of living for as long as possible. The odds of survival were punishingly slim, for the world was naught by a school of calamity and an endless burning furnace of tribulation. But those who survived the world shaped it--even as the world, simultaneously, shaped them.

Over the past six years I've had many difficulties. But I never lost my passion.

I won't give up. Even if the skies get rough.

Part of leadership (a big part of it actually) is the ability to stick with the dream for a long time.

What I did have, which others perhaps didn't, was a capacity for sticking at it, which really is the point, not the talent at all. You have to stick at it.

A Marine should be sworn to the patient endurance of hardships, like the ancient knights; and it is not the least of these necessary hardships to have to serve with sailors.

I haven't met anybody who hasn't been able to describe years and years and years of very, very difficult struggle through the whole process of achieving anything whatsoever. And there's no way to sort of get around that.

I'm well aware when they fired the starting gun I was halfway down the track, but I still ran as fast as I could for 25 years.