Quotes from Julia Cameron

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. SENECA

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.

Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.

Our tears prepare the ground for our future growth. Without this creative moistening, we may remain barren. We must allow the bolt of pain to strike us. Remember, this is useful pain; lightning illuminates.

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.

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.

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

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

We will experience the life we have the faith to experience.

There is the risk you cannot afford to take, [and] there is the risk you cannot afford not to take. PETER DRUCKER

Fatigue can make it hard to have faith. Too much busyness can make it hard to have faith. Too much of too little solitude can impact faith. For that matter, so can a bout of hunger or overwork, anything carried to an extreme. Faith thrives on routine. Look at any monastery and you will see that. Faith keeps on keeping on.

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

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

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you want. MARGARET YOUNG

the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

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)

When we walk, the two halves of our brains converse.

Listening to the siren song of more, we are deaf to the still small voice waiting in our soul to whisper, 'You're enough.

Agendas tend to drain the life out of relationships.

A career must be husbanded. Care must be taken. Everyday must bring some small bit of progress. How would an artist with any self-worth act? Act that way.

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.

It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time.

FESTIVITY BREEDS CREATIVITY. RIGIDITY BREEDS DESPAIR

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)