Quotes from Julia Cameron

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)

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. I learned this the way I have learned most things—quite

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.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

Remember, there is a creative energy that wants to express itself through you";

The if I had time lie is a convenient way to ignore the fact that novels require being written and that writing happens a sentence at a time. Sentences can happen in a moment. Enough stolen moments, enough stolen sentences, and a novel is born - without the luxury of time.

The trick to finding writing time, then, is to write from love and not with an eye to product.

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Younger artists are seedlings. Their early work resembles thicket and underbrush, even weeds. The halls of academia, with their preference for lofty intellectual theorems, do little to support the life of the forest floor.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. C. G. JUNG

The universe will reward you for taking risks on its behalf. SHAKTI GAWAIN

Without being acknowledged, they are often used as batteries by their families and friends, who feel free to both use their creative energies and disparage them.

Jealousy is always a mask for fear: fear that we aren't able to get what we want; frustration that somebody else seems to be getting what is rightfully ours even if we are too frightened to reach for it. At its root, jealousy is a stingy emotion.

The myth that we must have "time"—more time—in order to create is a myth that keeps us from using the time we do have.

The act of making art is both scary and healing. Art brings light to places that have remained dark. Art brings perspective. Making art, at any level, is an act of courage and an expression of faith.

When we let ourselves write from love, when we let ourselves steal minutes as gifts to ourselves, our lives become sweeter, our temperaments become sweeter.

No matter is too complex for the healing impact of divine mind. Divine mind arranges everything to its highest order. What lies within you knows how to act and when to act. Tuned to divine mind, you have an unshakable inner clarity that makes proper and appropriate choices. Your good is assured.

Self-expression is something that does not—and should not—ever stop.

Creativity - like human life itself - begins in the dark

Your depression is exhaustion. Like Atlas, you try to carry this world on your own shoulders. This was never my intention. Allow me to carry the world.

Most of us are really willing only to write well, and this is why the act of writing strains us.

We ourselves are the substance we withdraw to, not from, as we pull our overextended and misplaced creative energy back into our own core.

real artists can survive the most hostile environments and yet find their true calling like homing pigeons. That's hogwash. Many real artists bear children too early or have too many, are too poor or too far removed culturally or monetarily from artistic opportunity to become the artists they really are.