Julia Cameron Quotes

What is writing but an expression of my own life?

I'm very happy with the way I write. I think I do it good. But I've never really considered myself a writer.

Writers tell stories better, because they've had more practice, but everyone has a book in them. Yes, that old cliche.

I think writing is such a great talent, and if I was better, I would love to be a writer.

I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you're 12 years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life - certainly by the time you're 18.

I don't think I'm a brilliant writer, but I'm a good writer, and it's just so empowering to get involved.

I didn't know how to be a writer. But I thought, 'I can do this.'

No, you're either born a writer, a storyteller, or you're not.

Everyone thinks when they start writing that they can't do it. I was lucky. My sister Delia was the most important person in terms of encouraging me.

I'm a writer, and the subject is less important than the act of writing itself.

I loved English, and I did very well in it. A lot of teachers encouraged me to write, and because of that, it later made me think it was possible to be a writer.

You think you have some stable talent that will show no matter what you're writing, and if it doesn't seem to be getting across to the audience once, you can't imagine that moment when it suddenly will. Gradually, gradually you gain that confidence.

I mean, the problem is, I think I'm a great writer.

I thought I could write. So it was my intention to start off as a writer. But I wasn't really great at delivering the word at the end of the day.

I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.

Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.

I've written many nonfiction books, but that's a special gift.

Novel-writing is the only place where someone who would have liked to do anything can still do that vicariously.

I'm not a wildly gifted person; I don't play an instrument or speak another language or have great accomplishments in another field, as many writers do. But writing feels natural to me; the act of it seems to free up my unconscious, so that sometimes I feel that I have access to more ideas and information than my conscious mind could think up.

I've figured out in the course of my life that the one thing I'm good at doing is writing books, and it would be crazy to trade that in for something else.

One of the things you get to do as a writer is that you get to learn new stuff all the time, and I hope that I'm a better writer when I'm 70 than I was when I was 30. That's one of the great things about a literary career.

Writing is really very easy. Tap a vein and bleed onto the page. Everything else is just technical.

I'm not a great writer.

I never know how to give advice to a writer because there's so much you could say, and it's hard to translate your own experience. But of course, I always try. The main thing that I usually end up saying is to read a lot. To read a great deal and to learn from that.

Honestly, I feel pretty awed anytime I meet just about any writer. I get how hard it is to write and make a living from it, but there's also this almost magical force you need to tap into, and I'm amazed by anyone who can do it.