“This jewel of a book represents a dream meeting between subject and author. Natalie Goldberg’s trademark prose - wonderfully clear, simple, and deep - takes us into her profound understanding of haiku and makes this story of her search for haiku’s origins among beautiful gardens, mountains, modern cities, and ancient temples compelling and gripping. It’s also the ideal meeting of verse and prose: The haiku are embedded in a limpid narrative, free-flowing and irresistible as a mountain stream. When they appear now and then as beautiful stepping-stones in a journey of discovery, they come alive in ways that still the mind, expand time, and open the heart. A classic narrative of discovery and homage - and a simple, humble book to fall in love with.” (Henry Shukman, author of One Blade of Grass: Finding the Old Road of the Heart)

“Like haiku itself, Natalie Goldberg’s Three Simple Lines is spare, keenly observed, and blessedly light on its feet. This wise and spirited travelogue acquaints us with some of the form’s legendary practitioners - and reminds us just how much of life’s magic can be packed into a few inspired words.” (Hampton Sides, New York Times best-selling author of Ghost Soldiers and On Desperate Ground)

“Natalie Goldberg’s writing always offers a respite from the world, which it achieves by diving right into the madness of the moment. Like the haiku she reads, writes, and treasures, Three Simple Lines is a refuge in a chaotic world. Through her travels in Japan to seek the origins of haiku, she reveals the honest struggle of being a writer and, just beneath that, the honest struggle of being human.” (Jenn Shapland, author of the National Book Award finalist My Autobiography of Carson McCullers)