Natalie Goldberg Quotes

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.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.

It has no meaning, what do you use to write, the only thing that is important is: what do you write. A machine to write a book instead of a writer is not invented yet, and probably will never be.

You become a great writer by writing.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

The only way to learn writing is by writing. Talent, as charming as it sounds, amounts to no more than 12 per cent of the process. Work is 80 per cent. The remaining 8 per cent is 'luck' or 'zeitgeist' - in short, things that are not in our hands.

When people ask me for secrets to writing, I say, 'Read to write.'

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

A book, while it is being written, has an intense life of its own which you share.

Like all former thinkers, I'm writing a book.

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

Write your goddamned book now. The world awaits.

Our passions shape our books, repose writes them in the intervals.

Well, the secret to writing is writing. It's only a secret to people who don't want to hear it. Writing is how you be a writer.

You can't be a writer if you don't write, it's just that simple.

No book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned.

It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine.

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.

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

If you don't write the book, the book ain't gonna get written.

Like most-maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.

I think writing well takes a little bit of talent and an awful lot of work.

I've never actually even contemplated writing a book or having a book.