Julia Cameron

Serious art is born from serious play.

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

Fame is not the same as success, and in our true souls we know that.

If we have plain old ordinary fear then we are within reach of a solution. Fear has been with humankind for millennia and we do know what to do about it--pray about it, talk about it, feel the fear, and do it anyway. "Artistic" fear, on the other hand, sounds somehow nastier and more virulent, like it just might not yield to ordinary solutions--and yet it does, the moment we become humble enough to try ordinary solutions.

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)

We need to bridge our sense of loneliness and disconnection with a sense of community and continuity even if we must manufacture it from our time on the Web and our use of calling cards to connect long distance. We must __og on_ somewhere, and if it is only in cyberspace, that is still far better than nowhere at all. (264)

When it was suggested that I write a memoir I said, 'I'm not old enough. I'm not distinguished enough.' But I went home and sat down to write, and the material for the book just came flooding into my hands.

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

Art used to be made in the name of faith. We made cathedrals, we made stained-glass windows, we made murals.

Creativity is always a leap of faith. You're faced with a blank page, blank easel, or an empty stage.

I think that 'Floor Sample' is a story of resiliency, a lifelong spiritual search, and a lifelong sense of spiritual companionship that is most often expressed as creativity. My desire in writing the book was to step from behind the icon of 'Julia the teacher' and introduce 'Julia the artist.'

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.

We go into parenting, and we discover that we don't have the answers. We are at a loss.

Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness

Doing it all the time, whether or not we are in the mood, gives us ownership of our writing ability. It takes it out of the realm of conjuring where we stand on the rock of isolation, begging the winds for inspiration, and it makes it something as do-able as picking up a hammer and pounding a nail. Writing may be an art, but it is certainly a craft. It is a simple and workable thing that can be as steady and reliable as a chore__oes that ruin the romance?

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.

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

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