Natalie Goldberg Quotes

The writers job is to get naked, To hide nothing. To look away from nothing. To look at it. To not blink. To be not embarrassed or shamed of it. Strip it down and lets get down to where the blood is, the bone is. Instead of hiding it with clothes and all kinds of other stuff, luxury!

Being so honest in my writing is cathartic.

Sometimes I think I've been too honest, and other times, too explicit.

I've always been inspired by Genet, Henry Miller and Hubert Selby, Jr., who taught me that you've got to tell a bigger truth in whatever you're doing, but the truth is not popular.

I'm just writing about people. People are dark and complicated. I'm trying to tell the truth; that's all that I do.

I do not have the answers and as a woman I do not intend to play my own thoughts over the truth. I can clearly state the problems and tell you that I suffer from them.

One of the commitments I made to myself when I decided to write a book was to be brutally honest, particularly about myself.

It is always easier to write from the heart and deal with things in the present.

A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying, Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here.

I write about wounds, the eternal treasons of life. It's not very funny, but it's sincere. My commitment is to sincerity.

I feel that if I'm writing a book, it has to be an honest book: it has to say what I believe to be the truth, so that's kind of warts and all.

Honesty, vulnerability, pain - these are things that always supersede the trends of the day.

Writing my first book, 'Beautiful,' was the time that I was able to write the truth of it - that I was despairing at times, that I got depressed and felt like I couldn't cope. Writing became about being honest.

I write about things and put things into my albums that I don't talk to people about. I don't hold back or sugarcoat anything.

I think honesty is an important thing when writing a song. If you can't sing it with conviction, then no-one else is going to believe it.

To be interesting just tell your story with uncommon honesty.

I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.

You have to be quite brave to write about something that you honestly feel and think.

If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered.

What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.

Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real.

As for me, I've chosen to follow a simple course: Come clean. And wherever possible, live your life in a way that won't leave you tempted to lie. Failing that, I'd rather be disliked for who I truly am than loved for who I am not. So, I tell my story. I write it down. I even publish it. Sometimes this is a humbling experience. Sometimes it's embarrassing. But I haul around no terrible secrets.

If you're gonna write, for God in heaven's sake, try to get naked. Try to write the truth. Try to get underneath all the sham, all the excuses, all the lies that you've been told.

For two extraordinary years I have been working on it - learning to write - but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are "like" everybody - that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough - beauty.

If you're going to write a memoir, try to be as honest and open as you can.