Natalie Goldberg Quotes

As authors, we know that it is very difficult to unleash one's creativity.

Don't think about making art.

There is an exercise I teach at colleges: Get yourself a canvas and a bunch of acrylics and go into a very dimly lighted room. Dip a brush into one of the colors, slap it on the canvas, don't look, close your eyes, make a painting, don't look, turn the lights on and see what you've got. I think this releases people from the editor in their life that's always standing over their shoulder saying, "Oh, you don't have any talent; who do you think you are?"

Anything that I write comes from the soul.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

It's really easy to project this whole ideology of what being an artiste is, and I'm just not down with intellectualizing it. I just think, if you feel like doing something, then do it.

I never wanted to make a graphic novel. As soon as you become a 'writer,' you have to be intelligent all the time... I like the fact that I have the right once in a while to say silly things.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants.

Sometimes things just fall out of your head on the paper, and if you're smart, you learn not to touch them.

Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing - then a work of art may happen.

I just write what comes along. I don't have a detailed master plan.

Talking about how I might write the next book is like talking about whether or not to have sex. Any dithering ruins it.

If I have a long period of time away from acting, I tend to write.

Just write what comes to you.

I never do any song with any expectation.

I'm constantly creating and writing.

Each time I write, each time the authentic words break through, I am changed. The older order that I was collapses and dies. I lose control. I do not know exactly what words will appear on the page. I follow language. I follow the sound of the words, and I am surprised and transformed by what I record.

Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

I don't know what I'm going to write when I begin to write. It feels like you are walking down a path, but you can't see around the bend and you don't know where you are going to go, which is fun.

There's no one on the island telling them they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write.

Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words 'Write what you know' is confined to a labor camp. Please, talented scribblers, write what you don't. The blind guy with the funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how much combat do you think he saw?

I really think that if there's any one enemy to human creativity, especially creative writing, it's self-consciousness.

A creative person has to be alive. He can't borrow from things he's done in the past. He can't let his method choose his subjects or his characters. They can't be warped to fit his style.

A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.