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Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two.

Brenda Ueland

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

Believe Ordinary World
… the great artists … do not want security, egoistic or materialistic.
BRENDA UELAND

Artist Materialistic Want
The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny.
BRENDA UELAND

Love You Teacher Thinking
Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.
BRENDA UELAND

Creative Husband Murderer
The best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it.
BRENDA UELAND

Best Way Trying Way
we like fixed rules because that ends thinking and we can rest. But there is no resting place down here.
BRENDA UELAND

Ends Fixed Thinking
Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.
BRENDA UELAND

Express Human Talent
Write a true, careless, slovenly impulsive, honest diary every day of your life.
BRENDA UELAND

Diaries Honest Writing
It is so conceited and timid to be ashamed of one’s mistakes. Of course they are mistakes. Go on to the next.
BRENDA UELAND

Art Go Letting Mistake
Sometimes I think that perhaps the most competent business men, and lawyers and doctors, who must be at the office at nine o’clock every morning, do not realize this and take more credit for initiative and industry than they deserve.
BRENDA UELAND

Credit Doctor More Morning Office Realize
I found that many gifted people are so afraid of writing a poor story that they cannot summon the nerve to write a single sentence for months.
BRENDA UELAND

Fun People Writing
Inspiration does not come like a blot, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly all the time.
BRENDA UELAND

Energy Inspiration Time
Self-trust is so important. When you launch on a story, make your neck loose, feel free, good-natured. And be lazy. Feel that you are going to throw it away. Try writing utterly unplanned stories and see what comes out.
BRENDA UELAND

Lazy Self Writing
And it is why all the bright women of the world, who if more were expected of them, might do important work, but who instead have a chronic feeling of ineffectiveness and sloth.
BRENDA UELAND

Ineffectiveness Instead might Sloth Women
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.
BRENDA UELAND

Listening People Tired
These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas, such as: “I see where I can make an annual cut of $3.47 in my meat budget.” But they have no slow, big ideas.
BRENDA UELAND

Busy Cutting Ideas Thinking Waiting

Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two.

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Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two.

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