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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.

Brenda Ueland

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

Best Way Trying Way
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

Coffee Skulls Thinking
… the great artists … do not want security, egoistic or materialistic.
BRENDA UELAND

Artist Materialistic Want
You know, I have come to think listening is love, that’s what it really is.
BRENDA UELAND

Listening Thinking
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
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

Lazy Self Writing
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.
BRENDA UELAND

Effort Lilies People
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
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
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 UELAND

Self Speak Thinking
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.
BRENDA UELAND

Feelings Secret Self
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
BRENDA UELAND

Believe Ordinary World
… 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

Race Thinking Two
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.
BRENDA UELAND

Boss Feel Friend People Want Write
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
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

Art Go Letting Mistake

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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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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Popular Authors

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