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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.

Brenda Ueland

…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

Feelings People Writing
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

Coffee Strong Writing
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.
BRENDA UELAND

Artist Peace People
Orthodox criticism … is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the first ones to get killed off.
BRENDA UELAND

Helping Imagination Others People
And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don’t, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one.
BRENDA UELAND

Children Enemies Friends Husband
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

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

Sometimes Thinking Two
The best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it.
BRENDA UELAND

Best Way Trying Way
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

Children Flower Memories
Think of yourself as incandescent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and his messengers…. Think if Tiffany’s made a mosquito, how wonderful we would think it was!
BRENDA UELAND

Incandescent Messenger Think Yourself
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 Self Writing
Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.
BRENDA UELAND

Creative Husband Murderer
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
the only way to become a better writer is to become a better person.
BRENDA UELAND

Better Person Way Writing
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
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

Important Original Self Two Writing

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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