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Brenda Ueland Quotes

Brenda Ueland quotes

American Writer October 24, 1891 – March 5, 1985

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Quotes

The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny; whose attitude is:"Tell me more. Tell me all you can. I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out."And if you have no such friend,--and you want to write,--well, then you must imagine one. Brenda Ueland
We have come to think that duty should come first. I disagree. Duty should be a by-product. Writing, the creative effort, the use of the imagination, should come first? at least, for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve. Colds will disappear and all the other ailments of discouragement and boredom. Brenda Ueland
Work freely and rollickingly as though you were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters. Brenda Ueland
In the same way there is much, much in all of us, but we do not know it. No one ever calls it out in us, unless we are lucky enough to know intelligent, imaginative, sympathetic people who love us and have the magnanimity to encourage us, to believe in us, by listening, by praise, by appreciation, by laughing. If you are going to write, you must become aware of this richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there so that you can write opulently with with self-trust. Once you... Brenda Ueland
But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi--like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that ever was on earth--do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them. "Be not anxious for the morrow," and "which of you being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?"So they dare to be idle, i. e. not to be pressed and duty-driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and... Brenda Ueland
Remember William Blake who said: "Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius."The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up. But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible--villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word Brenda Ueland
Brenda Ueland quote: "Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is..."
Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two. Brenda Ueland
I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness. Brenda Ueland
Inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly and all the time. Brenda Ueland
If you write, good ideas must come welling up into you so that you have something to write. If good ideas do not come at once, or for a long time, do not be troubled at all. Wait for them. Put down little ideas no matter how insignificant they are. But do not feel, any more, guilty about idleness and solitude. Brenda Ueland
I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another. Brenda Ueland
Brenda Ueland quote: "Families are great murderers of the creative impulse,..."
Families are great murderers of the creative impulse, particularly husbands. Brenda Ueland
Brenda Ueland quote: "Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive,..."
Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands. Brenda Ueland
Brenda Ueland quote: "The imagination needs moodling,--long, inefficient happy..."
The imagination needs moodling,--long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering. Brenda Ueland
... the best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it. And what is the purpose of existence Here or Yonder but to discover truth and beauty and express it, i. e., share it with others? Brenda Ueland

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