Quotes from Julia Cameron

The great acting coach Michael Chekhov advised his students, "If you want to work on your art, work on your life.

Why should we all use our creative power …? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money. BRENDA UELAND

In a sense, as we are creative beings, our lives become our work of art.

Why indeed must "God" be a noun? Why not a verb... the most active and dynamic of all? MARY DALY THEOLOGIAN

To the perfectionist, there is always room for improvement. The perfectionist calls this humility. In reality, it is egotism. It is pride that makes us want to write a perfect script, paint a perfect painting, perform a perfect audition monologue.

Artists and intellectuals are not he same animal. This causes a great deal of confusion. Our schools teach educate us intellectually but not artistically. We learn to deconstruct art, not construct it.

Often, when we say it is "too late" for us to begin something, what we are really saying is that we aren't willing to be a beginner. But when we are willing to dip our toe in, even just a little, we are rewarded with a sense of youthful wonder. Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never. —WINSTON CHURCHILL

No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen. MINOR WHITE

Art lies in the moment of encounter: we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression. We become original because we become something specific, an origin from which work flows.

We are always the same age inside. —GERTRUDE STEIN

Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is a loop—an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole.

Real" artists are people who have learned to create despite their fears. They

If we are invested in a writing life—as opposed to a writing career—then we are in it for the process and not the product.

Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers, "Grow, grow." THE TALMUD

Non illegitimi te carborundum, the graffiti in prisoner-of-war camps is said to have run. The rough translation, very important for artists, is "Don't let the bastards get you down." Artists who take this to heart survive and often prevail. The key here is action. Pain that is not used profitably quickly solidifies into a leaden heart, which makes any action difficult.

The process of identifying a self inevitably involves loss as well as gain. We discover our boundaries, and those boundaries by definition separate us from our fellows. As we clarify our perceptions, we lose our misconceptions. As we eliminate ambiguity, we lose illusion as well. We arrive at clarity, and clarity creates change.

Art? You just do it. MARTIN RITT

Often, creativity is blocked by our falling in with other people's plans for us. We want to set aside time for our creative work, but we feel we should do something else instead.

Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown. CLAUDE BERNARD

It's a luxury to be in the mood to write. It's a blessing but it's not a necessity. Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.

Our tears prepare the ground for our future growth.

Your desire is your prayer. Picture the fulfillment of your desire now and feel its reality and you will experience the joy of the answered prayer. DR. JOSEPH MURPHY

If we eliminate the word writer, if we just go back to writing as an act of listening and naming what we hear, some of the rules dissappear. There is an organic shape, a form-coming-into-form that is inherent in the thing we are observing, listening to, and trying to put on the page. It has rules of its own that it will reveal to us if we listen with attention. Shape does not need to be imposed. Shape is a part of what we are listening to. When we just let ourselves write, we get it right.

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. HENRY MILLER