Quotes from Julia Cameron

Help your brother's boat across, and lo! your own has reached the shore. HINDU PROVERB

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size. MARK TWAIN

Allow me to bring you companions worthy of your love.

Mystery is at the heart of creativity.

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

As a rule of thumb, it is best to just admit that there is always one action you can take for your creativity daily.

Pages clarify our yearnings. They keep an eye on our goals. They may provoke us, coax us, comfort us, even cajole us, as well as prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. If we are drifting, the pages will point that out. They will point the way True North. Each morning, as we face the page, we meet ourselves. The pages give us a place to vent and a place to dream. They are intended for no eyes but our own.

YOU HAVE the right to my help. I am your creator. Your problems are my problems. Ask me for help. I give it to you gladly. I am saddened when you try to live alone. My desire for you is union and fulfillment. I am your answered prayer. I am always what you seek.

The obsession with time is really an obsession with perfection.

A mind too active is no mind at all. THEODORE ROETHKE

Think of me as deep music. You can always hear me if you try.

Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back. Remember that and be very gentle with yourself. A creative recovery is a healing process. You are capable of great things on Tuesday, but on Wednesday you may slide backward. This is normal. Growth occurs in spurts. You will lie dormant sometimes. Do not be discouraged. Think of it as resting.

Every child is born an artist. The trick is remaining one as an adult.

When people ask, "Why do we write morning pages?" I joke, "To get to the other side." They think I am kidding, but I'm not. Morning pages do get us to the other side: the other side of our fear, of our negativity, of our moods. Above all, they get us beyond our Censor. Beyond the reach of the Censor's babble we find our own quiet center, the place where we hear the still, small voice that is at once our creator's and our own.

Pages must be done longhand. The computer is fast—too fast for our purposes. Writing by computer gets you speed but not depth. Writing by computer is like driving a car at 85 mph. Everything is a blur. "Oh, my God, was that my exit?" Writing by hand is like going 35 mph. "Oh, look, here comes my exit. And look, it has a Sonoco station and a convenience store.

We want to set aside time for our creative work, but we feel we should do something else instead. As blocked creatives, we focus not on our responsibilities to ourselves, but on our responsibilities to others. We tend to think such behavior makes us good people. It doesn't. It makes us frustrated people.

The only anxiety is my imagined absence. I am never absent. I am present for you always.

Kindness is always just as visible as the cruelty you choose to see. Your eye does the beholding. I say to you, this is a beautiful world. Choose to see it so.

Each of us has an inner compass. Its voice calls us to our highest good. Sometimes it requires that we alter a longstanding but stifling situation. It is difficult to face the severing or alteration of a relationship even when we know such change is for the highest good.

Faced with a divorce or separation, faced with the need to terminate a long-standing friendship, I must remind myself that sometimes the most loving involvement is a non-involvement.

We forget that the imagination-at-play is at the heart of all good work.

Live with a quiet expectation of good.

The purpose of art is not a rarified, intellectual distillate— it is life, intensified, brilliant life. ALAIN ARIAS-MISSON

God must become an activity in our consciousness. JOEL S. GOLDSMITH