Julia Cameron Quotes

Julia Cameron offers gentle, plain-spoken encouragement for creative growth and love.

31 quotes

1. 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.

2. 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.

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

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. Life is a creative endeavor. It is active, not passive. We are the yeast that leavens our lives into rich, fully baked loaves. When we experience our lives as flat and lackluster, it is our consciousness that is at fault. We hold the inner key that turns our lives from thankless to fruitful. That key is 'Blessing.'

7. Focused on our good, focused on our abundance we naturally attract more of the same. This is spiritual law. Our consciousness is creative. 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?

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

9. When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature. All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others.

10. 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.

11. I honor my importance and the importance of others. None of us is dispensable, none of us is replacable. In the chorus of life each of us brings a True Note, a perfect pitch that adds to the harmony of the whole. I act creatively and consciously to actively endorse and encourage the expansion of those whose lives I touch. Believing in the goodness of each, I add to the goodness of all. We bless each other even in passing.

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

13. Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness.

14. Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it is. And the faith to trust our own admission. The admitting is often very difficult.

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

16. Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

17. 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.

18. Technology teaches passivity. Absorbed in our devices - at any age - we are absorbed in someone else's perspective.

19. Technology teaches passivity. Absorbed in our devices - at any age - we are absorbed in someone elses perspective.

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

21. 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.

22. We are not accustomed to thinking that God's will for us and our own inner dreams can coincide.

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

24. 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.

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

26. Creativity is our true nature; blocks are an unnatural thwarting of a process at once as normal and as miraculous as the blossoming of a flower at the end of a slender green stem.

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

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

29. There's this mythology that parents are supposed to be parents 24/7 and are supposed to be completely fulfilled by their kids. That's not the case. We need to make our own passions a priority.

30. 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.

31. All change can be expansive in potential. The choice is ours.