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 UELANDAnd 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.
More Brenda Ueland Quotes
-
-
The best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it.
BRENDA UELAND -
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 -
Your motto: Be Bold, Be Free, Be Truthful.
BRENDA UELAND -
You know, I have come to think listening is love, that’s what it really is.
BRENDA UELAND -
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.
BRENDA UELAND -
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.
BRENDA UELAND -
I know that we live after death and again and again, not in the memory of our children, or as a mulch for trees and flowers, however poetic that may be, but looking passionately and egocentrically out of our eyes.
BRENDA UELAND -
Don’t think of yourself as an intestinal tract and tangle of nerves in the skull, that will not work unless you drink coffee.
BRENDA UELAND -
… 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.
BRENDA UELAND -
And this fear (since the imagination is always creative) comes about presently and you slide down into the complete slump of several weeks or years – the very thing you dreaded and set your jaw against.
BRENDA UELAND -
There is that American pastime known as “kidding” – with the result that everyone is ashamed and hangdog about showing the slightest enthusiasm or passion or sincere feeling about anything.
BRENDA UELAND -
The only way to love a person is…by listening to them and seeing and believing in the god, in the poet, in them. For by doing this, you keep the god and the poet alive and make it flourish.
BRENDA UELAND -
Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable.
BRENDA UELAND -
we like fixed rules because that ends thinking and we can rest. But there is no resting place down here.
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







