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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

You Do Not Know Is in You- an Inexhaustible Fountain of Ideas. Another reason for writing a diary is to discover that the ideas in you are an inexhaustible fountain.
BRENDA UELAND

Fountain Ideas Knows
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).
BRENDA UELAND

Editors Thinking Writing
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.
BRENDA UELAND

Active Religion Science Today
… 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
Inspiration does not come like a blot, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly all the time.
BRENDA UELAND

Energy Inspiration Time
Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.
BRENDA UELAND

Creative Husband Murderer
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

Belief More Slowly Unstimulated
Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do it.
BRENDA UELAND

Knows Thinking Work
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
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
And 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.
BRENDA UELAND

Ineffectiveness Instead might Sloth Women
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

Enthusiasm Feelings Passion
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
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.
BRENDA UELAND

Fun People 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
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

Against Complete Deaaded Presently

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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