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 UELANDEverybody 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.
More Brenda Ueland Quotes
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Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable.
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Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.
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Write a true, careless, slovenly impulsive, honest diary every day of your life.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, – happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.
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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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Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.
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Creative power flourishes only when I am living in the present.
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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.
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When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.
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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 -
Be bold, free, and truthful.
BRENDA UELAND