Brenda Ueland Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• No writing is a waste of time – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good.

  Brenda Ueland

  Writing, Imagination, Creative

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

  14 Copy quote

• Creative listeners are those who want you to be recklessly yourself, even at your very worst, even vituperative, bad-tempered. They are laughing and just delighted with any manifestation of yourself, bad or good. For true listeners know that if you are bad-tempered it does not mean that you are always so. They don't love you just when you are nice; they love all of you.

  Brenda Ueland

  Nice, Love You, Mean

  24 Copy quote

• We are always afraid to start something that we want to make very good, true, and serious.

  Brenda Ueland

  Inspirational, Life, Truth

  Brenda Ueland (1980). “Me”, Ayer Company Pub

  17 Copy quote

• 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 they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good.

  Brenda Ueland

  Peace, Artist, People

  20 Copy quote

• the only way to become a better writer is to become a better person.

  Brenda Ueland

  Writing, Way, Better Person

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.99, Simon and Schuster

  12 Copy quote

• Writing is the action of thinking, just as drawing is the action of seeing and composing music is the action of hearing.

  Brenda Ueland

  Writing, Thinking, Drawing

  Brenda Ueland (1980). “Me”, Ayer Company Pub

  14 Copy quote

• Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable.

  Brenda Ueland

  Inspirational, Acceptance, Unique

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.138, Simon and Schuster

  72 Copy quote

• The only way to write well, so that people believe what we say and are interested or touched by it, is to slough off all pretentiousness and attitudinizing.

  Brenda Ueland

  Believe, Writing, People

  Brenda Ueland (1987). “If You Want to Write”

  4 Copy quote

• The best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it.

  Brenda Ueland

  Trying, Way, Best Way

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.138, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• You can write anything you want to,--a six-act blank verse, symbolic tragedy or a vulgar short, short story. Just so that you write it with honesty and gusto, and do not try to make somebody believe that you are smarter than you are. What's the use? You can never be smarter than you are.

  Brenda Ueland

  Honesty, Believe, Writing

  6 Copy quote

• Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter,--making us think of funnier and funnier things.

  Brenda Ueland

  Laughter, Thinking, People

  Brenda Ueland (1987). “If You Want to Write”

  4 Copy quote

• Inspiration comes to us slowly and quietly . prime it with a little solitude.

  Brenda Ueland

  Inspiration, Solitude, Littles

  12 Copy quote

• I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don't listen to our children, or those we love. And least of all - which is so important, too - to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force...When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.

  Brenda Ueland

  Children, Powerful, Writing

  6 Copy quote

• ... the spirit, I think, is a stream, a fountain, and must be continually poured out, for only if it is poured out will more and clearer streams come.

  Brenda Ueland

  Thinking, Spirit, Fountain

  Brenda Ueland (1980). “Me”, Ayer Company Pub

  4 Copy quote

• So remember these two things: you are talented and you are original. Be sure of that. I say this because self-trust is one of the very most important things in writing.

  Brenda Ueland

  Writing, Self, Two

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• ...at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had.

  Brenda Ueland

  Writing, People, Feelings

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.

  Brenda Ueland

  Husband, Creative, Murderer

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

  12 Copy quote

• The true self is always in motion like music, a river of life, changing, moving, failing, suffering, learning, shining.

  Brenda Ueland

  Life Changing, Moving, Self

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

• Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would still keep on writing.

  Brenda Ueland

  Art, Writing, Creativity

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• If I did not wear torn pants, orthopedic shoes, frantic disheveled hair, that is to say, if I did not tone down my beauty, people would go mad. Married men would run amuck.

  Brenda Ueland

  Running, Men, Hair

  Brenda Ueland (1993). “Strength to Your Sword Arm: Selected Writings”, Holy Cow Press

  7 Copy quote

• we like fixed rules because that ends thinking and we can rest. But there is no resting place down here.

  Brenda Ueland

  Thinking, Ends, Fixed

  Brenda Ueland (1993). “Strength to Your Sword Arm: Selected Writings”, Holy Cow Press

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Ideas, Long

  6 Copy quote

• I readan article by a highly educated man wherein he told with what conscientious pains he had brought up all his children tobe skeptical of everything, never to believe anything in life or religion or their own feelings without submitting it to many rational doubts, to have a persistent, thoroughly skeptical, doubting attitude toward everything.... I think he might as well have taken them out in the backyard and killed them with an ax.

  Brenda Ueland

  Faith, Pain, Attitude

  14 Copy quote

• You must become aware of the richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there, so that you can write opulently and with self-trust. If you once become aware of it and have faith in it, you will be all right.

  Brenda Ueland

  Believe, Writing, Self

  Brenda Ueland (1987). “If You Want to Write”

  6 Copy quote

• Now some people when they sit down to write and nothing special comes, no good ideas, are so frightened that they drink a lot of strong coffee to hurry them up, or smoke packages of cigarettes, or take drugs or get drunk. They do not know that ideas come slowly, and that the more clear, tranquil and unstimulated you are, the slower the ideas come, but the better they are.

  Brenda Ueland

  Strong, Coffee, Writing

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

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