Julia Cameron Quotes

You either have to write or you shouldn't be writing. That's all.

Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

Perhaps one would be wise when young even to avoid thinking of oneself as a writer - for there's something a little stopped and satisfied, too healthy, in that. Better to think of writing, of what one does as an activity, rather than an identity - to write, I write; we write; to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun; to keep working at the thing, at all hours, in all places, so that your life does not become a pose, a pornography of wishing.

[On writing:] The most egotistic of occupations, and the most gratifying while it lasts.

Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.

I wanted to use what I was, to be what I was born to be - not to have a 'career', but to be that straightforward obvious unmistakable animal, a writer.

I don't exist without writing.

If people want to know who I am, it is all in the work.

Writing is something I took up rather than anything I had an inclination toward. I like acting -delivering someone else's message - but writing is more of an accomplishment.

I don't write because there's an audience. I write because there is literature.

I became a writer because during several of the most important years of my life, writing seemed to me to be the most unreal, unattractive, and unecessary idea ever imposed upon the human race.

Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong. It is no wonder if we sometimes tend to take ourselves perhaps a bit too seriously.

You can't want to be a writer. You have to be one.

This is where I begin to do the writing. I am now going to be the pen and not the paper.

Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying 'Listen to me'.

Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what a vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction.

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do - the actual act of writing - turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss.

Don’t try to be an artist. Find the thing within you that needs to be expressed. You might find it is art.

I've always been the audience that I wanted to reach, so I write for myself.

If you do everything in your power to avoid writing and still can't, then you must be a writer.

I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one.

Writing is one of the most assertive things a person can do.

My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am.

I go on writing so that I will always have something to read.