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Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life QUOTES

Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life QUOTES

1 " Writing practice brings us back to the uniqueness of our own minds and an acceptance of it. We all have wild dreams, fantasies, and ordinary thoughts. Let us to feel the texture of them and not be afraid of them.Writing is still the wildest thing I know. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

2 " After you have finished a piece of work, the work is then none of your business. Go on and do something else. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

3 " I remember a friend many years ago who had taped a sign to his refrigerator: There's a dream dreaming us. If you try to think about what that means it makes your mind silly, but that silliness is good. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

4 " Let yourself live in something that is already rightfully yours—your own wild mind. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

5 " LIFE IS NOT ORDERLY. No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

6 " You have to let writing eat your life and follow it where it takes you. You fit into it; it doesn’t fit neatly into your life. It makes you wild. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

7 " When you write a memory, it isn’t in the past anyway. It’s alive right now. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

8 " I met a doctor the other night who told me he had always wanted to be a writer. I nodded. People always tell me that...Then I thought to myself, 'You know, I've never met a writer who wanted to be anything else. They might bitch about something they're writing or about their poverty, but they never say they want to quit...and if they do abandon it they become crazy, drunk or suicidal.' Writing is elemental. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

9 " In other words you disappear, you become one with your words, not separate, and when you put your pen down, the you who was writing is gone. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

10 " I'm sorry I don't have brilliant reasons for beginning a novel. As you go along, you make up reasons to do what you want. There's an open space. Enter it. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

11 " Writing is the crack through which you can crawl into a bigger world, into your wild mind. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

12 " Don’t worry, no one ever died of it. You might cry or laugh, but not die. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

13 " Style requires digesting who we are. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

14 " Let some of the good writing go. Don’t worry. There’ll be lots of it over time. You can’t use all of it. Be generous and allow some of it to lie fallow. What a relief! We can write well and let it go. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

15 " Failure is a hard word for people to take. Use the word kindness then instead. Let yourself be kind. And this kindness comes from an understanding of what it is to be a human being. Have compassion for yourself when you write. There is no failure—just a big field to wander in. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

16 " I cannot say why, but the simple act of reading it aloud allows you to let go of it. Do not forget this. Believe me, it helps. At first it is a very scary thing to do. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

17 " this quiet place exists as we exist, here on the earth. It just is. That is where the best writing comes from and what we must connect with in order to write well. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

18 " That dead feeling hits hard and permeates the first year. It comes back to test you often in the following years, but if you get through the first year, then you know about it. It will never have the power to defeat you again. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

19 " the artist and the alcoholic have parallel paths. They both go into the darkness, but the alcoholic gets stuck there. The artist (if she is not also addicted) goes into the darkness and is transformed by the experience and comes out more alive. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

20 " do all my original writing by hand. I have greater mobility: I can write on planes, with friends in cafés. Plus it feels more connected with my body; my hand moves with my arm and shoulder, which is connected to my chest and heart. All good writing comes from the body and is a physical experience. "

― Natalie Goldberg , Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life