Natalie Goldberg Quotes

People come. They go. Dying is the same as rehab or moving back to Missouri. It just means I won't be seeing them again.

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.

Relationships are temporary, and everyone needs to understand that.

So we're in this process of letting go of our own attachments to our physical forms and to the people we love, and... basically everything. Life is like this one big process of letting go.

Everything comes out of nothingness and goes back into nothingness. Hence there is no need for attachment, because attachment will bring misery. Soon it will be gone. The flower that has blossomed in the morning, by the evening will be gone. Don't get attached; otherwise in the evening there will be misery. Then there will be tears, then you will miss the flower. Enjoy while it is. But remember, it has come out of nothing, and it will go back to nothing. And the same is true about everything, even about people.

At one point, I thought life was about acquiring things. But as a I get older, life is totally about losing everything.

Don't cling to things because everything is impermanent.

In the sense that writing is to retrieve the past and stop the passing of time, all writing is about loss. It's not nostalgia in the sense of yearning to bring back the past, but recognition of the erosion of things as you live.

I saw that nothing was permanent. You don't want to possess anything that is dear to you because you might lose it.

No man can lose what he never had.

Your timeless self does not age and has no fear of the future. Contemplate your physical self and all its possessions, and practice laughing peacefully at it all.

Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.

You've got to learn to accept the law of life, and face the fact that we disintegrate slowly.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live.

There's nothing glorious in dying. Anyone can do it.

If one considered life as a simple loan, one would perhaps be less exacting. We possess actually nothing; everything goes through us.

For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear.

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

Anyone can die. Rule number one is don't get too attached to a character, anyone can go.

Life is the game that must be played, this truth at least, good friends, we know; so live and laugh, nor be dismayed as one by one the phantoms go.

We don't take anything when we pass away, and we need to do with the sense of responsibility.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

To have died once is enough.