Julia Cameron famous quotes

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.
-- Julia Cameron

#Money #Work #Teaching

The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people’s expectations.
-- Julia Cameron

#Self #Voice #People

I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow.
-- Julia Cameron

#Inspirational #Empowerment #Acting

The face of love is variable. I am able to love without demanding that my relationships assume the structures and forms I might choose for them. My love is fluid, flexible, committed, creative. My love allows people and events to unfold as they need. My love is not controlling. It does not dictate or demand. My love allows those I love the freedom to assume the forms most true to them. I release all those I love from my preconceptions of their path. I allow them the dignity of self-definition while I offer them a constant love that is every variable in shape.
-- Julia Cameron

#Love #Acceptance #Self

Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness.
-- Julia Cameron

#Life #Creativity #Darkness

In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me.
-- Julia Cameron

#Inspirational #Pain #Past

Art is the imagination at play in the field of time. Let yourself play.
-- Julia Cameron

#Art #Play #Imagination

As you move toward a dream, the dream moves toward you.
-- Julia Cameron

#Dream #Moving

I am compassionate. I allow my heart and imagination to embrace the difficulties and concerns of others. While maintaining my own balance, I find it within myself to extend sympathy, attention, and support. When they are grieved, I listen with openness and gentle strength. I offer loyalty, friendship, and human understanding. Without undermining or enabling, I aid and assist others to find their strength. I allow the healing power of the Universe to flow through me, soothing the hearts and feelings of those I encounter.
-- Julia Cameron

#Loyalty #Healing #Heart

... success or failure, 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.
-- Julia Cameron

#Life #Gratitude #Truth

Stop telling yourself that dreams don't matter, that they are only dreams and that you should be more sensible.
-- Julia Cameron

#Dream #Inspiration #Matter

Art opens the closets, airs out the cellars and attics. It brings healing.
-- Julia Cameron

#Art #Healing #Air

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.
-- Julia Cameron

#Motivational #New Beginnings #Recovery

We don't always know what makes us happy. We know, instead, what we think SHOULD. We are baffled and confused when our attempts at happiness fail...We are mute when it comes to naming accurately our own preferences, delights, gifts, talents. The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people's expectations. The tongue of the original self is the language of the heart.
-- Julia Cameron

#Confused #Heart #Thinking

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.
-- Julia Cameron

#Spiritual #Art #Waiting

Creativity requires faith. Faith requires that we relinquish control.
-- Julia Cameron

#Creativity

Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back. Remember that and be very gentle with yourself.
-- Julia Cameron

#Inspirational #Change #Positive

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.
-- Julia Cameron

#Humility #Pride #Accomplishment

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

#Healing #Heart #Creativity

Procrastination is not Laziness", I tell him. "It is fear. Call it by its right name, and forgive yourself.
-- Julia Cameron

#Procrastination #Names #Forgiving

But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano / act / paint / write a decent play?" Yes . . . the same age you will be if you don't.
-- Julia Cameron

#Writing #Play #Piano

The creator made us creative. Our creativity is our gift from God. Our use of it is our gift to God. Accepting this bargain is the beginning of true self-acceptance.
-- Julia Cameron

#Inspirational #Creativity #Acceptance

You are asked to keep a ledger - a small notebook will do - of money in and money out. Counting brings clarity, and clarity is one of the first and finest fruits of prosperity.
-- Julia Cameron

#Notebook #Fruit #Firsts

Art is one of the few careers without a mandatory retirement age.
-- Julia Cameron

#Art #Retirement #Careers

We should write, above all, because we are writers, whether we call ourselves that or not.
-- Julia Cameron

#Writing #Should

Creativity flourishes when we have a sense of safety and self-acceptance.
-- Julia Cameron

#Creativity #Acceptance #Self

Our tears prepare the ground for our future growth.
-- Julia Cameron

#Growth #Tears #Our Future

Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.
-- Julia Cameron

#Creativity

An artist paints, dances, draws, writes, designs, or acts at the expanding edge of consciousness. We press into the unknown rather than the known. This makes life lovely and lively.
-- Julia Cameron

#Creativity #Writing #Love Life

As artists, we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them.
-- Julia Cameron

#Art #Self #Creative

You are your own Promised Land, your own new frontier.
-- Julia Cameron

#Land #Promised Land

As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
-- Julia Cameron

#Powerful #Creative #Gentle

Expect the universe to support your dream. It will.
-- Julia Cameron

#Dream #Support #Universe

What we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours: Which do we want more of?
-- Julia Cameron

#Choices #Focus #Empowering

If we are forever yearning for more time, we are forever discounting what is offered.
-- Julia Cameron

#Forever #More Time #Yearning

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. . .  Fear is what blocks an artist.  The fear of not being good enough.  The fear of not finishing.  The fear of failure and of success.  The fear of beginning at all.
-- Julia Cameron

#Art #Block #Finishing

People frequently believe the creative life is grounded in fantasy. The more difficult truth is that creativity is grounded in reality, in the particular, the focused, the well observed or specifically imagined.
-- Julia Cameron

#Believe #Creativity #Reality

My will for you is not harsh or unpleasant. It is gentle and perfectly tailored to your unique needs. Do not fear my direction. I am your heart's happiest guide.
-- Julia Cameron

#Heart #Unique #Needs

We are ourselves creations. We are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves. This is the God-force extending itself through us. Creativity is God's gift to us. Using creativity is our gift back to God.
-- Julia Cameron

#Creativity #Creative #Creation

Any little bit of experimenting in self-nurturance is very frightening for most of us.
-- Julia Cameron

#Self #Littles #Frightening

If we lean into what we love instead of soldiering toward what we 'should,' our pace quickens, our energy rises, optimism sets in. What we love is nutritious for us.
-- Julia Cameron

#Love Is #Optimism #Energy

We tend to think being hard on ourselves will make us strong. But it is cherishing ourselves that gives us strength
-- Julia Cameron

#Strong #Thinking #Giving

By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.
-- Julia Cameron

#Artist #Chance #Very Good

When we clear the physical clutter from our lives, we literally make way for inspiration and 'good, orderly direction' to enter.
-- Julia Cameron

#Inspiration #Way #Clutter

As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.
-- Julia Cameron

#Dream #Moving #Divinity

Become willing to see the hand of God and accept it as a friend's offer to help you with what you are doing.
-- Julia Cameron

#Uplifting #Hands #Helping

We must learn to let the flow manifest itself where it will.....not where we will it.
-- Julia Cameron

#Flow #Manifest

I surrender my anxiety and my sense of urgency. I allow God to guide me in the pacing of my life. I open my heart to God's timing. I release my deadlines, agendas, and stridency to the gentle yet often swift pacing of God. As I open my heart to God's unfoldings, my heart attains peace. As I relax into God's timing, my heart contains comfort. As I allow God to set the tone and schedule of my days, I find myself in the right time and place, open and available to God's opportunities.
-- Julia Cameron

#Letting Go #Heart #Opportunity

All change can be expansive in potential. The choice is ours.
-- Julia Cameron

#Change #Choices

Creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless.
-- Julia Cameron

#Creativity #Moments #Timeless

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.
-- Julia Cameron

#Distance #Moving #Artist

Life is a spiritual dance and that our unseen partner has steps to teach us if we will allow ourselves to be led. The next time you are restless, remind yourself it is the universe asking 'Shall we dance?
-- Julia Cameron

#Spiritual #Next #Steps

Being in the mood to write, like being in the mood to make love, is a luxury that isn't necessary in a long-term relationship. Just as the first caress can lead to a change of heart, the first sentence, however tentative and awkward, can lead to a desire to go just a little further.
-- Julia Cameron

#Writing #Heart #Love Is

Just as a good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche.
-- Julia Cameron

#Rain #Writing #Air

Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.
-- Julia Cameron

#Writing #Breathing #Matter

The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.
-- Julia Cameron

#Creativity #Creative #Simple Life

Often it is tenacity, not talent, that rules the day.
-- Julia Cameron

#Talent #Tenacity

Pray to catch the bus, then run as fast as you can.
-- Julia Cameron

#Running #Prayer #Praying

Love is the substance of all life. Everything is connected in love, absolutely everything.
-- Julia Cameron

#Love #Life #Marriage

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

#Sick #Treats #Feels

Artistic anorexia & sexual avoidance have the same root fears – fear of intimacy, fear of exposure, fear of failure”.
-- Julia Cameron

#Roots #Anorexia #Artistic

Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough - that we should try again.
-- Julia Cameron

#Perfection #Trying #Quests

No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.
-- Julia Cameron

#Dream #Art #Selfish

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

#Writing #Ideas #Needs

Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.
-- Julia Cameron

#Heart #Creativity #Creative

Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention...the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.
-- Julia Cameron

#Lying #Survival #Attention

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.
-- Julia Cameron

#Impact #Solitude #Have Faith

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.
-- Julia Cameron

#Mean #Outcomes #Too Much

Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite - getting something down.
-- Julia Cameron

#Life #Beautiful #Art

Serious art is born from serious play.
-- Julia Cameron

#Art #Play #Serious

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

#Art #Progress #Taught

God does not give us more than we can handle," I am told but I wonder if God doesn't overestimate me just a little. Or perhaps, and this is likely, I underestimate God.
-- Julia Cameron

#Giving #Doe #Littles

Once we are willing to accept that anything worth doing might even be worth doing badly, our options widen.
-- Julia Cameron

#Healing #Teens #Might

Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.
-- Julia Cameron

#Artist #Judging #Effort

Creativity is the life force that Dylan Thomas called 'the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.
-- Julia Cameron

#Flower #Creativity #Green

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.
-- Julia Cameron

#Art #Work #Needs

The reward for attention is always healing.
-- Julia Cameron

#Healing #Attention #Rewards

The growth of one blesses all. I am commited to grow in love. All that I touch, I leave in love. I move through this world consciously and creatively.
-- Julia Cameron

#Life #Moving #Growth

Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy.
-- Julia Cameron

#Creativity #Order #Creative

Rather than being taught to ask ourselves who we are, we are schooled to ask others. We are, in effect, trained to listen to others’ versions of ourselves.
-- Julia Cameron

#Who We Are #Taught

Mystery is at the heart of creativity. As creative channels, we need to trust the darkness.
-- Julia Cameron

#Heart #Creativity #Creative

Anger is meant to be acted on. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction. We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us.
-- Julia Cameron

#Moving #Needs #Use

As artists, we belong to an ancient and holy tribe. We are the carriers of the truth that spirit moves through us all. When we deal with one another, we are dealing not merely with our own human personalities but also with the unseen but ever-present throng of ideas, visions, stories, poems, songs, sculptures, art-as-facts that crowd the temple of consciousness waiting their turn to be born.
-- Julia Cameron

#Song #Art #Moving

At root, a pearl is a 'disturbance' a beauty caused by something that isn't supposed to be there, about which something needs to be done. It is the interruption of equilibrium that creates beauty. Beauty is a response to provocation, to intrusion. ... The pearl's beauty is made as a result of insult......
-- Julia Cameron

#Beauty #Roots #Needs

When you are feeling too dull and too domesticated get on a horse, sit tall in the saddle, and for a moment live in a world that feels like risk and adventure.
-- Julia Cameron

#Wise #Horse #Adventure

Sometimes, in order to go forward, You must first go back.
-- Julia Cameron

#Wise #Order #Firsts

Here's what I like about God: Trees are crooked, mountains are lumpy, a lot of his creatures are funny looking, and he made it all anyway. He didn't let the aardvark convince him he had no business designing creatures. He didn't make a puffer fish and get discouraged, no, the maker made things - and still does.
-- Julia Cameron

#Wise #Design #Tree

Creativity is a spiritual issue.
-- Julia Cameron

#Spiritual #Creativity #Ideas

If you think of the universe as a vast electrical sea in which you are immersed and from which you are formed, opening to your creativity changes you from something bobbing in that sea to a more fully functioning, more conscious, more cooperative part of that ecosystem.
-- Julia Cameron

#Creativity #Thinking #Sea

Writing just for the hell of it is heaven.
-- Julia Cameron

#Writing #Creativity #Heaven

All of us contain a divine, expressive spark, a creative candle intended to light our path and that of our fellows.
-- Julia Cameron

#Wise #Light #Creative

A sketch book freezes time. It is an instantaneous form of meditation focusing us on the worth of every passing moment.
-- Julia Cameron

#Wise #Book #Meditation

At it's essence, art is an alchemical process. Alchemy is a process of transformation.
-- Julia Cameron

#Wise #Art #Essence

Writing-and this is the big secret-wants to be written. Writing loves a writer the way God loves a true devotee. Writing will fill your heart if you let it. It will fill your pages and help to fill your life.
-- Julia Cameron

#Writing #Heart #Profound

It is on these (20min) walks that my best ideas come to me. It is while walking that difficult clarity emerges. It is while walking that I experience a sense of well-being and connection, and it is in walking that I live most prayerfully.
-- Julia Cameron

#Ideas #Connections #Clarity

As we lose our vagueness about ourself, our values, our life situation, we become available to the moment. It is there, in the particular, that we contact the creative self. Art lies in the moment of encounter: we meet our truth and we meet ourselves; we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression .
-- Julia Cameron

#Art #Lying #Self

We waste a lot of time and a lot of talent trying to write for the common reader, whom we will never meet. Instead we should be writing for our ideal reader.
-- Julia Cameron

#Writing #Trying #Waste

when I talk about a writing life, I'm talking about a life in which writing is the dominant response to living.
-- Julia Cameron

#Writing #Talking #Response

Writing is a combination of being alert to your outer surroundings and alive to your inner reality ...
-- Julia Cameron

#Writing #Reality #Alive

We don't often talk about the fact that writing is all about rhythm. When you get too up in your head, you can lose a lot of your writing. Sometimes what a writer really needs to do is go dancing.
-- Julia Cameron

#Writing #Dancing #Needs