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 UELANDI 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.
More Brenda Ueland Quotes
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Think of yourself as incandescent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and his messengers.
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Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.
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Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.
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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.
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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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Creative listeners are those who want you to be recklessly yourself, even at your very worst, even vituperative, bad-tempered. They are laughing and just delighted with any manifestation of yourself, bad or good.
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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.
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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 great artists … do not want security, egoistic or materialistic.
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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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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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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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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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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
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If you would shut your door against the children for an hour a day and say: ‘Mother is working on her five-act tragedy in blank verse!’ you would be surprised how they would respect you. They would probably all become playwrights.
BRENDA UELAND