Julia Cameron Quotes

Love is not love if it is 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.

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

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

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?

In dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express.

The Artist's Way is a spiritual journey, a pilrimage home to the self.

In our human lives, we are often impatient, ill-tempered, inappropriate. We find it difficult to treat our intimates with the love we really hold for them. Despite this, they bear with us because of the larger, higher level of family that they honor even in our outbursts. This is their commitment.

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

Do what intrigues you, explore what interests you; think mystery, not mastery.

What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do.

I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others.

When we put the pen to paper, we articulate things in our life that we may have felt vague about. Before you write about something, somebody says, 'How do you feel?' and you say, 'Oh, I feel okay.' Then you write about it, and you discover you don't feel okay.

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.

Answered prayers are scary. They imply responsibility. You asked for it. Now that you've got it, what are you going to do? Why else the cautionary phrase Watch out for what you pray for; you might just get it?

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

My heart holds the world in tender awe.

Our moods and insights are transitory. This current is a flow of grace moving us to our right livelihood, companions, destiny.

Art is an act of the soul, not the intellect. When we are dealing with people's dreams - their visions, really - we are in the realm of the sacred. We are involved with forces and energies larger than our own. We are engaged in a sacred transaction of which we know only a little: the shadow, not the shape.

All too often, it is audacity and not talent that moves an artist to center stage.

I believe that what we want to write wants to be written. I believe that as I have an impulse to create, the something I want to create has an impulse to want to be born. My job, then, is to show up on the page and let that something move through me, in a sense, what wants to be written is none of my business.

We must attend to what our inner guidance is nudging us toward.

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

There is a connection between self-nurturing and self-respect.

You are on the look out for experience, strength, and hope. You want to hear from the horse's mouth exactly how disappointments have been survived. It helps to know that the greats have had hard times too and that your own hard times merely make you part of the club.

So much of an artist's career hinges on the sense that we are going somewhere, that we are not just trapped by the four walls of wherever we are. For creative sanity, I must believe that if I just do the next right thing, a path will unfold for me.

We are meant to midwife dreams for one another. Success occurs in clusters

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.

To write is to right things. A path will emerge.

Water seeks its own level and water rises collectively

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.

It is the inner commitment to be true to ourselves and follow our dreams that triggers the support of the universe.

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

If you want to write a novel, it's the Divine mind wanting to express.

Do not call procrastination laziness. Call it fear.

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

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.

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.

Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out.

I honor the wisdom of life. I learn from life in all its forms. The tree teaches me. The sparrow and the wren sing my song. I am open to the lessons Life brings me from the earth. I learn from the wind, from the sun, from the small flowers, and from the stars. I walk without arrogance. I learn from all I encounter. I open my mind and heart to the guidance and love that come to me from the natural world.

I learned to just show up at the page and write down what I heard. Writing became more like eavesdropping and less like inventing a nuclear bomb.

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

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

Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong.

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

Far from making me feel different and special, my [spiritual] experiences made me feel the same, ordinary, and interconnected. If I felt more spiritual, everyone else felt more spiritual as well. (276)

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

Our internal artist is always our creative child.

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.