Natalie Goldberg Quotes

Younger songwriters will ask me, 'What did you do?' And it's like, 'Well, I worked a day job, and I didn't stake anything. I didn't quit my day job. I didn't have any hopes at all. I just did the thing that I believed in, and I waited a long time.'

The wheel goes round and round and comes back, and opportunities are given again. You just have to remember that.

This morning of the small snow I count the blessings, the leak in the faucet which makes of the sink time, the drop of the water on water.

Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure it.

I just try to be myself, whatever that is. I don't think about how I'll be remembered. I just want to be consistent over a long period of time. That's what the great players do.

Just put one foot in front of the other.

You've got to clock the hours and pay your dues. Then eventually, people will come to you. You have to be patient and appreciative.

Do not despise the bottom rungs in the ascent to greatness.

There was never a point in my life where I gave up. My marriage, as you know, fell apart.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

And again, hast thou valued Patience, Courage, Perseverance, Openness to light; readiness to own thyself mistaken, to do better next time

I’m not a saint unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.

You have to wade through tons of 'no's' to get one 'yes,' and you can't let it go to your head when you get that yes.

I'll never forget a Podcast I did with Dr Joseph Mercola when my bestseller, 'The Plant Paradox' had just come out. He was wild about the book, and apoligized that he had never heard of me before the book. He asked what I had been doing for so many years. I replied that I was merely following the Buddha's advice to 'chop wood and carry water.'

Just because you did something once doesn't mean anything. You have to be willing in your heart to begin again every day. The minute I'm not willing to do that, I will retire.

I'm just like anyone else: I need love and water. I don't really consider myself a 'Superstar.'

It's important to stay humble, stay level-headed and keep working hard.

I'm trying to... stay humble and keep doing what I do.

If you're trying to avoid one move that you don't think is going to work out, don't then settle for a different move that maybe doesn't check all the boxes. Be true to the philosophy and understand the bigger picture. There's always another day to fight.

The humility keeps me going forward.

'Mr. Majnu' is just my way of saying that I am trying to start off from the basics.

It took a lot of time to find my stride, and it was really humbling.

The main thing is to try to put in your head that we all start from the bottom.

In waiting for the glorious moment of that first book contract, writers must have giant reservoirs of patience. Yet they must persevere because they don't know the destiny that is being worked out for them. They creep humbly along the ground, without the spacious aerial vision of their lives that would show them the destiny in store for them.

A traveller at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedaemonian, "I do not believe you can do as much." "True," said he, "but every goose can."