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" I never gained control of my mind—how do you dominate an ocean?—but I began to form a real relationship with it. Through writing and meditation I identified monkey mind, that constant critic, commentator, editor, general slug and pain-in-the-ass, the voice that says, “I can’t do this, I’m bored, I hate myself, I’m no good, I can’t sit still, who do I think I am?” I saw that most of my life had been spent following that voice as though it were God, telling me the real meaning of life—“Natalie, you can’t write shit”—when, in fact, it was a mechanical contraption that all human minds contain. "
― Natalie Goldberg , Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft
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" That yes you commit to as reader and writer is the current that hums through all the work. Of course, you might say yes and then come up against an iceberg. No, you suddenly say definitively. And there you are. What do you do next? I can’t answer that for you, but I do know you eventually have to do something—or freeze to death. See if you can chip away at even a little of the mass in front of you—or try standing up on it. Does it support you? In a weeklong cold winter workshop in Taos I read aloud this passage from Richard Nelson’s The Island Within: The first section of road follows the bay’s edge, behind a strip of tall, leafless alders. When we’re about halfway around, a bald eagle in dark, youthful plumage sails down to a fish carcass on the beach just ahead. He seems careless or unafraid—quite different from the timid, sharp-eyed elders—so I leash Shungnak to the bike, drop my pack, and try to sneak in for a closer look. Using a driftwood pile as a screen, I stalk within fifty feet of the bird, but he spots me peering out between the logs. "
― Natalie Goldberg , Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft
