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 UELANDBut 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.
More Brenda Ueland Quotes
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You can argue with a theologian or a politician, but doctors are sacrosanct. They know; you do not. Science has its mystique much more powerful than any religion active today.
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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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The writer has a feeling and utters it from his true self. The reader reads it and is immediately infected and has exactly the same feeling. This is the whole secret of enchantment and fascination.
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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.
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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 -
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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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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The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny.
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Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.
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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 -
we like fixed rules because that ends thinking and we can rest. But there is no resting place down here.
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Write a true, careless, slovenly impulsive, honest diary every day of your life.
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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.
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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.
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If we don’t act at all (express our imaginings either in work or a changing personality, so that we can learn and think again something better) we certainly rot.
BRENDA UELAND