Quotes from Julia Cameron

We go into parenting, and we discover that we don't have the answers. We are at a loss.

I believe that I am very lucky to have close friends who are faithful. From my friends, I have learned the importance of perseverance.

Writing is a spiritual practice in that people that have no spiritual path can undertake it and, as they write, they begin to wake up to a larger connection. After a while, people tend to find that there is some muse that they are connecting to.

'Faith and Will' is aimed at the same readership as 'The Artist's Way.' The book is for spiritual seekers in all walks of life.

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

The trick is to metabolize pain as energy. Learn, when hit by loss, to ask the right question: What next? instead of Why me?

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

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

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

We always do the best we can by the light we have to see by.

All too often, it is audacity and not talent that moves an artist to center stage.

Boredom is just "What's the use?" in disguise. And "What's the use?" is fear, and fear means you are secretly in despair. So put your fears on the page. Put anything on the page. Put three pages of it on the page.

Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it.

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.

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.

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.

Making art has taught me that the tiniest smidgen of progress is something to be cherished.

The doing of something productive regardless of the outcome is an act of faith. The doing of a small something when a large something is too much for us is perhaps especially an act of faith. Faith means going forward by whatever means we can.

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

The reward for attention is always healing. It may begin as the healing of a particular pain—the lost lover, the sickly child, the shattered dream. But what is healed, finally, is the pain that underlies all pain: the pain that we are all, as Rilke phrases it, "unutterably alone." More than anything else, attention is an act of connection.

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.

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.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. ANAÏS NIN

The reward for attention is always healing.