Quote

I learned, when hit by loss, to ask the right question: What next? instead of Why me? . . . Whenever I am willing to ask What is necessary next? I have moved ahead. Whenever I have taken no for a final answer I have stalled and gotten stuck.

Julia Cameron

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Julia Cameron
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: March 4
Film Director
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Libertyville
Illinois
Willing
Whenever
Answers
Moved
Stalled
Asks
Answer
Questioning
Taken
Necessary
Gotten
Next
Loss
Final
Right
Instead
Finals
Question
Ahead
Learned
Stuck

More quotes by Julia Cameron

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Did you write today? Then you're a writer today.
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You are your own Promised Land, your own new frontier.
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when I talk about a writing life, I'm talking about a life in which writing is the dominant response to living.
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Art is born in attention.
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Creativity is always a leap of faith. You're faced with a blank page, blank easel, or an empty stage.
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It is all too easy as an artist to allow the shape of our career to be dictated to us by others. We can so easily wait to be chosen. Such passivity invites despair. To remain healthy and vital, artists must stay proactive in their own behalf.
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Workaholism is an addiction, and like all addictions, it blocks creative energy.
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If we are forever yearning for more time, we are forever discounting what is offered.
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Anger is meant to be acted on. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction. We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us.
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Love is the greatest medicine. I ask to be healing medicine for others. I ask my heart to expand its boundaries and to love others as they wish to be loved. I ask my heart to expand its boundaries and open to my being loved as I wish to be loved.
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Rather than being taught to ask ourselves who we are, we are schooled to ask others. We are, in effect, trained to listen to others’ versions of ourselves.
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We are the ORIGIN of our art, its homeland. Viewed this way, ORIGINALITY is the process of remaining true to ourselves.
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Writing is like listening to a melody line in my head. Note by note, it knows where it wants to go. I follow it and lay it down. I can pare it, shape it, and polish it later...My job is to take down the dribs and drabs - to free-associate, if you will, knowing that the associations have their own plans for where we're going with all this.
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In our human lives, we are often impatient, ill-tempered, inappropriate. We find it difficult to treat our intimates with the love we really hold for them. Despite this, they bear with us because of the larger, higher level of family that they honor even in our outbursts. This is their commitment.
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Our modern ideas of 'functioning' through things are really quite inhuman. We have this idea that no matter what is going on we still have to color between the lines, act normal.
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In recovering from our creative blocks, it is necessary to go gently and slowly... These are baby steps. Progress, not perfection, is what we should be asking of ourselves.
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Do not call procrastination laziness. Call it fear.
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In dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express.
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Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse. . . Remember that in order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one
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Many of us believe that 'real artists' do not experience self-doubt. In truth, artists are people who have learned to live with doubt and do the work anyway.
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