Julia Cameron Quotes

Artists are visionaries. We routinely practice a form of faith, seeing clearly and moving toward a creative goal that shimmers in the distance – often visible to us, but invisible to those around us. Art is an act of faith, and we practice practicing it. Sometimes we are called on pilgrimages on its behalf and, like many pilgrims, we doubt the call even as we answer it. But answer we do.

Most academics know how to take something apart, but not how to assemble it.

Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite – getting something down. The directions are important here.

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 the specifically imagined.

Instead of enjoying the process, the perfectionist is constantly grading the results.

Writing just for the hell of it is heaven.

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.

Art is born in attention. Its midwife is detail.

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.

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.

Leap and the net will appear.

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