Julia Cameron Quotes

We write to taste life twice," Anais Nin wrote, "in the moment and in retrospection.

To keep a diary is to attempt a difficult literary form. Its effectiveness is likely to derive from a special blend of honesty and appetite for life that gives the power to record everyday happenings while magically freeing them from banality and triviality.

My diaries were written primarily, I think, not to preserve the experience but to savor it, to make it even more real, more visible and palpable, than in actual life. For in our family an experience was not finished, not truly experienced, unless written down or shared with another.

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I'm a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.

When I go back and read my journals or fiction, I am always surprised. I may not remember having those thoughts, but they still exist and I know they are mine, and it's all part of making sense of who I am.

I'm always writing and reflecting on life. I want to suck it all in.

I don't journal that much, honestly.

When I'm out having the experiences, that's exactly what I'm doing: having the experiences. Then I can later reflect and write.

I often spend the majority of my time thinking and writing down notes.

I have a little pocket journal. I just put the pen on the paper and just go.

I do a lot of journaling.

I've always kept a journal and brought storytelling into my teaching.

When I'm between projects, I keep a journal I call a 'thought log,' and it's my practice to write down whatever interests me.

Before you go to bed, write down three 'gratefuls' for the day and three 'did wells' (they can even include something as simple as doing the laundry)-the results can be amazing!

I don't write for catharsis; I have to write to understand.

Write a true, careless, slovenly impulsive, honest diary every day of your life.

Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.

I don't know what I think until I write it down.

I made a note in my head to be aware of things as they were happening, because they might not happen again. Up to that point, I was not really that appreciative of what was going on, or thinking about documenting life in a plainspoken manner. I was talking about my life and writing songs, but then I would go back and listen and they were about dreams, and legends, and metaphors and that was just not my life!

I am ashamed every day, and more ashamed the next. But I will spend the rest of my life in this living space writing these notes, this journal, recording my acts and reflections, finding some honor, some worth at the bottom of things. I want ten thousand pages that will stop the world.

I write in my own journal when something extraordinary or funny happens. And there's some nice imagery in there. I don't think of what to do with it.

Whenever something good happens, write it down. Buy a special notebook . . . and use it to list all the good in your life.

I don't worry about being exposed. When I'm writing about myself I think about myself as a character. There is a ton of stuff going on in my life that I don't write about. If I need to write that stuff down, I write about myself in my diary.

Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience; to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder upon it, and dwell upon it.