Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his *true* self and not from the self he thinks he *should* be.
BRENDA UELANDCreative power flourishes only when I am living in the present.
More Brenda Ueland Quotes
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we like fixed rules because that ends thinking and we can rest. But there is no resting place down here.
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If you write something and they all tell you it is bad – editors, critics, everybody – think it over and you may become convinced that they are right (though you are not to be ashamed or discouraged for a minute, but keep on writing).
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To have the external pressure of a job removed is very astonishing. Your own will is now your only motor and it has no horse-power.
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Inspiration does not come like a blot, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly all the time.
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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.
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Science and vivisection make no appeal to a theological idea, much less a political one.
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Creative power flourishes only when I am living in the present.
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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.
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… when I am really alone some power seems to grow in me. … Conjugality made me think of a three-legged race, where two people cannot go fast and keep tripping each other because their two legs are tied together.
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You have to hold your audience in writing to the very end-much more than in talking, when people have to be polite and listen to you.
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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.
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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.
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Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.
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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.
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The best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it.
BRENDA UELAND