Julia Cameron Quotes

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

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.

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.

...when we move out of faith into the act ofJ creation, the universe is able to advance.

Timid young artists, adding parental fears to their own, often give up their sunny dreams of artistic careers, settling into the twilight world of could-have-beens and regrets.

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

For most of us, the seductive and unstated part of "if I had enough time" is the unstated sentence "to hear myself think." In other words, we imagine that if we had time we would quiet our more shallow selves and listen to a deeper flow of inspiration. Again, this is a myth that lets us off the hook— if I wait for enough time to listen, I don't have to listen now, I don't have to take responsibility for what is trying to bubble up today.

The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. PABLO PICASSO

To be an artist is to recognize the particular. To appreciate the peculiar. To allow a sense of play in your relationship to accepted standards. To ask the question “Why?” To be an artist is to risk admitting that much of what is money, property, and prestige strikes you as just a little silly.

I think that I need to learn a few different modalities of change: gradual and grounded like a seed growing and, too, when it is time to leap lest I be left hanging over a chasm clutching frantically to either side. In other words, I may need to listen to guidance about when to edge forward and when to leap forward. What clearly does not serve me is trying to meet every situation with an obdurate set mode.

We've all heard that the unexamined life is not worth living, but consider too that the unlived life is not worth examining.

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

Creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless.

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.