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Brenda Ueland Biography

Brenda Ueland (October 24, 1891 – March 5, 1985) was a journalist, editor, freelance writer, and teacher of writing. She is best known for her book If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit.

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Brenda Ueland Quotes

I learned. . . that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.

Creating, Creativity, Inspiration, Regularly, Slowly, Striving

When you will, make a resolution, set your jaw, you are expressing an imaginative fear that you won't do the thing. If you knew you would do the thing, you would smile happily and set about it. 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.

Creative, Imagination, Several, Thing, Years

Your motto: Be Bold, Be Free, Be Truthful.

Being Truthful, Free, Motto, Truthful

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.

Self, Speak, Speaks, Thinking, Truth

Creative power flourishes only when I am living in the present.

Creative, Creative Power, Flourishes, Live In The Present, Living

Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would still keep on writing.

Art, Cent, Certain, Creativity, Keep, Writing

We start out in our lives as little children, full of light and the clearest vision.

Children, Full, Light, Lives, Vision

Writing is the action of thinking, just as drawing is the action of seeing and composing music is the action of hearing.

Drawing, Hearing, Seeing, Thinking, Writing

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.

Beads, Children, Creativity, Happy, Stringing, Writing

I hate orthodox criticism. I don't mean great criticism, like that of Matthew Arnold and others, but the usual small niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which thinks it can improve people by telling them where they are wrong, and results only in putting them in straitjackets of hesitancy and self-consciousness, and weazening all vision and bravery.

Bravery, Hate, Hesitancy, Mean, Thinking, Weazening

running is the right thing to do! I am free, healthy with a good complexion. It is that automobile addict who should be ashamed: driving in a sealed car in warmed-over carbon monoxide and smoking a seegar. I am the Goddess! He is a bug in a monkey nut!

Addict, Fitness, Healthy, Nuts, Running, Sealed

we like fixed rules because that ends thinking and we can rest. But there is no resting place down here.

Down, Ends, Fixed, Rules, Thinking

Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.

Everybody, Express, Human, Humans, Talent, Talented

The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.

Act, Becomes, Bold, People, Thinking, Tragedy

The true self is always in motion like music, a river of life, changing, moving, failing, suffering, learning, shining. That is why you must freely and recklessly make new mistakes - in writing or in life - and do not fret about them but pass on and write more.

Failing, Life Changing, Mistake, Moving, Pass, Self

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.

Constantly, Current, Listening To Others, People, Strange, Tired

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).

Writing, Thinking, Editors, Though, Ashamed

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.

Hold, Listen, People, Polite, Talking, Writing

I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don't listen to our children, or those we love. And least of all - which is so important, too - to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. . . When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.

Children, Creates, Magnetic, Powerful, Unfold, Writing

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.

Change, Learn, Rot, Thinking, Work

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Brenda Ueland Biography

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