Julia Cameron Quotes

133 Sourced Quotes

All too often too often we try to push, pull, outline and control our ideas instead of letting them grow organically. The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.
Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.

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

Julia Cameron
Creativity — like human life itself — begins in darkness. We need to acknowledge this. All too often, we think only in terms of light: "And then the lightbulb went on and I got it!" It is true that insights may come to us as flashes. It is true that some of these flashes may be blinding. It is, however, also true that such bright ideas are preceded by a gestation period that is interior, murky, and completely necessary.

Julia Cameron
Never ask whether you can do something. Say instead that you are going to do it, then fasten your seat belt.

Julia Cameron
The essential element in nurturing our creativity lies in nurturing ourselves.

Julia Cameron
Love is not love if it compelled by reason and driven by logic — love exists in spite of those things, not because of them. It is a emotion which needs no fuel to fire it or oxygen to feed it; if you have to look for the why, then stop looking; it was never there at all.

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

Julia Cameron
Many of us believe that 'real artists' do not experience self-doubt. In truth, artists are people who have learned to live with doubt and do the work anyway.

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

Julia Cameron
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
Writing is like listening to a melody line in my head. Note by note, it knows where it wants to go. I follow it and lay it down. I can pare it, shape it, and polish it later...My job is to take down the dribs and drabs - to free-associate, if you will, knowing that the associations have their own plans for where we're going with all this.

Julia Cameron
Just as blood is a fact of your physical body and nothing you invented, creativity is a fact of your spiritual body and nothing you must invent.

Julia Cameron
When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good, orderly direction.

Julia Cameron
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
We all have time to write. We have time to write the minute we are willing to write badly, to chase a dead end, to scribble a few words, to write for the hell of it instead of for the perfect and polished result.

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

Julia Cameron
Life is what we make of it. Whether we conceive of an inner god force or an other, outer God, doesn't matter. Relying on that force does.

Julia Cameron
Creativity makes life useful to us. It also makes us useful to life.

Julia Cameron
Choice by choice, moment by moment, I build the necklace of my day, stringing together the choices that form artful living.

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

Julia Cameron
It is my experience both as an artist and as a teacher that when we move out on faith into the act of creation, the universe is able to advance. It is a little like opening the gate at the top of a field irrigation system. Once we remove the blocks, the flow moves in.

Julia Cameron
We call what we write brainchildren, and just as a pregnancy must not be overstressed and artificially hurried for fear of damaging or aborting the child, so, too, a piece of work asks that we not try to force it in unnatural directions.

Julia Cameron
Progress, not perfection, is what we should be asking of ourselves.

Julia Cameron
Most artists, ashamed of their need for encouragement, try to carry their work to term like a secret pregnancy.

Julia Cameron
In order to have a real relationship with our creativity, we must take the time and care to cultivate it.

Julia Cameron