Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Julia Cameron

American Teacher, Author, Artist, Poet, Playwright, Novelist, Filmmaker, Composer and Journalist, known for book, "The Artist's Way"

"The creative process is one of surrender, not control."

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

"Anger is fuel. We feel it and we want to do something... Anger is meant to be listened to... Anger is not the action itself. It is action's invitation."

"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"

"Nothing dies harder than a bad idea."

"Creativity requires faith... creativity requires receptivity and profound trust."

"In order to risk, we must jettison our accepted limits... Very often a risk is worth taking simply for the sake of taking it. There is something enlivening about expanding our self-definition, and a risk does exactly that."

"Success or failure, the truth of life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people’s expectations."

"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"

"Leap, and the net will appear."

"As you move toward a dream, the dream moves toward you."

"It takes constant vigilance not to slip into negativity or simple apathy. It takes courage to believe over any given period of time that we are getting better and not sliding into decline."

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

"Creativity requires faith. Faith requires that we relinquish control."

"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."

"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 “log on” somewhere, and if it is only in cyberspace, that is still far better than nowhere at all."

"Making art has taught me that the tiniest smidgen of progress is something to be cherished."

"I ask to be made beautiful like the trees are beautiful, each growing according to a unique plan. Lop off a limb and and the tree will accommodate it's loss, still growing and still beautiful. It is my hope to be able to flourish in a similar fashion, taking on the shape and dimensions that is intended for me."

"Often it is tenacity, not talent, that rules the day."

"Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher place. Start right where you are. "

"There is no fact, no detail of our life too sordid for God's intervention. God has seen murder. God has seen rape. God has seen drug addiction's and alcoholism's utter degradation. God is available to us no matter what our circumstances. God can find us in a crack house. God can find us crumpled in a doorway or cowering on a park bench. We need only reach out to discover that God reaches back. We are led a step at a time even when we feel we are alone. Sometimes God talks to us through people. Sometimes God reaches us through circumstances or coincidence. God has a million ways to reach out to us, and when we are open to it, we begin to sense the touch of God coming to us from all directions."

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

"When you feel yourself to be in critical condition, you must treat yourself as gently as you would a sick friend."

"Serious art is born from serious play."

"Perfectionism doesn't believe in practice shots. It doesn't believe in improvement. Perfectionism has never heard that anything worth doing is worth doing badly--and that if we allow ourselves to do something badly we might in time become quite good at it. Perfectionism measures our beginner's work against the finished work of masters. Perfectionism thrives on comparison and competition. It doesn't know how to say, "Good try," or "Job well done." The critic does not believe in creative glee--or any glee at all, for that matter. No, perfectionism is a serious matter."

"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."

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

"When we walk, the two halves of our brains converse."

"We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. we should write because writing is good for the soul. we should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in."

"Agendas tend to drain the life out of relationships."

"Artistic anorexia & sexual avoidance have the same root fears – fear of intimacy, fear of exposure, fear of failure."

"We will experience the life we have the faith to experience."

"Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life -- including ourselves. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator's creativity within us and our lives. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves. Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity."

"I think I could learn a little patience with myself if I took a view of myself that included concepts like dormancy (instead of laziness), seed planting (instead of just scattered), gestation (instead of doing-something-right-this-second)."

"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 born in attention. Its midwife is detail."

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

"Selecting a challenge and meeting it creates a sense of self-empowerment that becomes the ground for further successful challenges. "

"Enthusiasm is not an emotional state. It is a spiritual commitment, a loving surrender to our creative process. Enthusiasm - from the Greek, 'filled with God' - is an ongoing energy supply tapped into the flow of life itself."

"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."

"The beginner's humility and openness lead to exploration. Exploration leads to accomplishment. All of it begins at the beginning, with the first small and scary step."

"The grace to be a beginner is always the best prayer for an artist."