Julia Cameron

“I believe that what we want to write wants to be written”

“But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano / act / paint / write a decent play?" Yes . . . the same age you will be if you don't.”

“Procrastination is not Laziness", I tell him. "It is fear. Call it by its right name, and forgive yourself.”

“The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union; the heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity.”

“Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as creator but seldom see "creator" as the literal term for "artist". I am suggesting you take the term "creator" quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist with the Great Creator. Accepting this concept can greatly expand your creative possibilities.”

“The grace to be a beginner is always the best prayer for an artist. The beginner’s humility and openness lead to exploration. Exploration leads to accomplishment. All of it begins at the beginning, with the first small and scary step . . . .Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher place. Start right where you are.”

“I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow.”

“Art is born in attention.”

“Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out.”

“The reward for attention is always healing.”

“We've all heard that the unexamined life is not worth living, but consider too that the unlived life is not worth examining.”

“Creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless.”

“There is a treadmill quality to workaholism.”

“Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.”

“Creativity requires activity…And most of us hate to do something when we can obsess about something else instead.”

“What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.”

“No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.”

“I ask to be made beautiful like the trees are beautiful, each growing according to a unique plan. Lop off a limb and and the tree will accommodate it's loss, still growing and still beautiful. It is my hope to be able to flourish in a similar fashion, taking on the shape and dimensions that is intended for me.”

“We have this idea that we need to be in the mood to write. We don't.”

“Basic Principles:1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy.2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life -- including ourselves.3. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator's creativity within us and our lives.4. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.5. Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.6. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction.8. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.9. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.”

“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.”

“The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all.”

“Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it is. And the faith to trust our own admission. The admitting is often very difficult.”

“Art is an act of the soul, not the intellect. When we are dealing with people's dreams - their visions, really - we are in the realm of the sacred. We are involved with forces and energies larger than our own. We are engaged in a sacred transaction of which we know only a little: the shadow, not the shape.”

“We should write because it is human nature to write. Writing claims our world. It makes it directly and specifically our own. We should write because humans are spiritual beings and writing is a powerful form of prayer and meditation, connecting us both to our own insights and to a higher and deeper level of inner guidance.We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. Writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. We should write because writing is good for the soul. We should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in. We should write, above all, because we are writers, whether we call ourselves that or not.”

“In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me.”

“Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention...the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”

“Artists are visionaries. We routinely practice a form of faith, seeing clearly and moving toward a creative goal that shimmers in the distance - often visible to us, but invisible to those around us.”

“Being in the mood to write, like being in the mood to make love, is a luxury that isn't necessary in a long-term relationship. Just as the first caress can lead to a change of heart, the first sentence, however tentative and awkward, can lead to a desire to go just a little further.”

“Just as a good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche.”

“Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.”

“Artistic anorexia & sexual avoidance have the same root fears – fear of intimacy, fear of exposure, fear of failure”.”

“Far from making me feel different and special, my [spiritual] experiences made me feel the same, ordinary, and interconnected. If I felt more spiritual, everyone else felt more spiritual as well. (276)”

“We need to bridge our sense of loneliness and disconnection with a sense of community and continuity even if we must manufacture it from our time on the Web and our use of calling cards to connect long distance. We must “log on” somewhere, and if it is only in cyberspace, that is still far better than nowhere at all. (264)”

“we should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. we should write because writing is good for the soul. we should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in.”

“Sometimes the dying live more fiercely and wisely than the rest of us. (146)”

“You do not need to work to become spiritual. You are spiritual; you need only to remember that fact. Spirit is within you. God is within you. (67)”

“And why are we supposed to be serious about God? Did God show up and crack the whip? “You there, Annie in Ohio, I see you laughing a lot and frankly it really pisses Me off . . . “ (50)”

“It is one of the gifts of great spiritual teachers to make things simple. It is one of the gifts of their followers to complicate them again. Often we need to scrape away the accumulated complications of a master’s message in order to hear the kernel of what they said. (24)”

“We are not accustomed to thinking that God's will for us and our own inner dreams can coincide.”

“When we seek daily spiritual guidance, we are guided toward the next step forward for our art. Sometimes the step is very small. Sometimes the step is, "Wait. Not now." Sometimes the step is, "Work on something else for a while." When we are open to Divine Guidance, we will receive it. It will come to us as the hunch, the inkling, the itch. It will come to us as timely conversations with others. It will come to us in many ways--but it will come.”

“. . . reaching toward God has made me more me and not less me. I was always afraid you would erase me. Instead, you are helping me to sketch me in.”

“I think that I need to learn a few different modalities of change: gradual and grounded like a seed growing and, too, when it is time to leap lest I be left hanging over a chasm clutching frantically to either side. In other words, I may need to listen to guidance about when to edge forward and when to leap forward. What clearly does not serve me is trying to meet every situation with an obdurate set mode.”

“I think I could learn a little patience with myself if I took a view of myself that included concepts like dormancy (instead of laziness), seed planting (instead of just scattered), gestation (instead of doing-something-right-this-second).”

“God does not give us more than we can handle," I am told but I wonder if God doesn't overestimate me just a little. Or perhaps, and this is likely, I underestimate God.”

“When you feel yourself to be in critical condition, you must treat yourself as gently as you would a sick friend.”

“If we have plain old ordinary fear then we are within reach of a solution. Fear has been with humankind for millennia and we do know what to do about it--pray about it, talk about it, feel the fear, and do it anyway. "Artistic" fear, on the other hand, sounds somehow nastier and more virulent, like it just might not yield to ordinary solutions--and yet it does, the moment we become humble enough to try ordinary solutions.”

“Often it is tenacity, not talent, that rules the day.”

“It takes constant vigilance not to slip into negativity or simple apathy. It takes courage to believe over any given period of time that we are getting better and not sliding into decline.”

“Pray to catch the bus, then run as fast as you can.”