Julia Cameron Quotes

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

There is no such thing as being done with an artistic life. Frustrations and rewards exist at all levels on the path.

The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

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

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. PABLO PICASSO

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. As we lose our vagueness about our self, our values, our life situation, we become available to the moment. It is there, in the particular, that we contact the creative self. Until we experience the freedom of solitude, we cannot connect authentically. We may be enmeshed, but we are not encountered. Art lies in the moment of encounter: we meet our truth and we meet ourselves; we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression. We become original because we become something specific: an origin from which work flows.

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

Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.

It is all too easy as an artist to allow the shape of our career to be dictated to us by others. We can so easily wait to be chosen. Such passivity invites despair. To remain healthy and vital, artists must stay proactive in their own behalf.

"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.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything. EUGÈNE DELACROIX

Most of us are not raised to actively encounter our destiny. We may not know that we have one. As children, we are seldom told we have a place in life that is uniquely ours alone. Instead, we are encouraged to believe that our life should somehow fulfill the expectations of others, that we will (or should) find our satisfactions as they have found theirs. Rather than being taugh to ask ourselves who we are, we are schooled to ask others. We are, in effect, trained to listen to others' versions of ourselves. We are brought up in our life as told to us by someone else! When we survey our lives, seeking to fulfill our creativity, we often see we had a dream that went glimmering because we believed, and those around us believed, that the dream was beyond our reach. Many of us would have been, or at least might have been, done, tried something, if...
If we had known who we really were.

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

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

True life is lived when tiny changes occur. LEO TOLSTOY Creative living requires the luxury of time, which we carve out for ourselves — even if it’s fifteen minutes for quick morning pages and a ten-minute minibath after work.