Natalie Goldberg Quotes

Everything I've written has been personal and touched on things that I needed to deal with in my personal life. So I just feel that writing is great therapy, and the best writing comes from truth, and so I mine my life constantly for that.

One of the nice things about writing is you can take essentially painful things in your life and turn them into something that might be useful, or at least entertaining, to somebody else.

I am writing My Life to laugh at myself, and I am succeeding.

I recommend free writing in the morning and the evening as a type of mental shower.

Remember that the writing itself is good for you. If your story is so close to home that you are afraid to write it, it probably means you need to write it.

When we write about our lives we respond to them. As we respond to them we are rendered more fluid, more centered, more agile on our own behalf. We are tendered conscious.

I don't mean to be flippant about cancer - it was hard, it was tough and it was scary. Then my next manuscript was about cancer because I had a whole new topic to write about. And because I wrote, it didn't take over. Writing took the chaos out of cancer.

One writes not to be read but to breathe...one writes to think, to pray, to analyze. One writes to clear one's mind, to dissipate one's fears, to face one's doubts, to look at one's mistakes--in order to retrieve them. One writes to capture and crystallize one's joy, but also to disperse one's gloom. Like prayer--you go to it in sorrow more than joy, for help, a road back to 'grace'.

A couple months after my heart attack, fifty-seven years after I'd given it up, I started to write again. I did it for myself alone, not for anyone else, and that was the difference. It didn't matter if I found the words, and more than that, I knew it would be impossible to find the right ones.

I've been writing books because it's been my way of dealing with the demons. The act of sitting down and writing the books down has started healing process that's been long overdue.

Writing is a type of therapy for me. I'm always trying to break down what happened, and why I felt a certain way.

I do a lot of journaling.

It's very special that I can go through things - and write them down and record them - and so many people can relate. Not everybody can get out who they are and really feel better after they write.

I was almost teaching myself through writing without even realizing it. It's like therapy. You can hear my progression as a person and how much happier I became, which is really cool for me to hear because I'm proud of myself.

My only way of processing anything for me is by writing.

The odd thing is, that I wrote The Great Spring while I had cancer and it's not about cancer. It was after I was done with cancer that I wrote a book about it.

Writing's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

I suppose what I like about Zen is that the teachers are constantly questioning your insight and challenging it, looking for sloppiness or laziness in it, and ways you can go past that.

I wonder if I can write this history, or if on every page there will be some sneaking show of a bitterness I thought long dead. I think myself cured of all spite, but when I touch pen to paper, the hurt of a boy bleeds out with the sea-spawned ink, until I suspect each carefully formed black letter scabs over some ancient scarlet wound.

Having cancer does make you try to be better at everything you do and enjoy every moment. It changes you forever. But it can be a positive change.

I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.

When you enter a new experience, all that requires healing rushes to the surface . . . You have to pause.

I spoke to a girl today who had cancer and we were talking about how this is such a hard thing for her, but it taught her a big lesson on who her friends are and so much about life. She's 18. And I was like, that's how I feel.

I wrote the book Don't Die, My Love as I was going through radiation, so it certainly has an air of authenticity about it because I was there. I think all of my books took on kind of a deeper tone when the lady who wrote about cancer all of a sudden had cancer. I'm doing well. I went through it all and they said, 'You're fine."

I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.