Brenda Ueland Quotes

65 Sourced Quotes

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
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.

Brenda Ueland
The only way to become a better writer is to become a better person.

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

Brenda Ueland
I 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.

Brenda Ueland
The best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it.

Brenda Ueland
The spirit, I think, is a stream, a fountain, and must be continually poured out, for only if it is poured out will more and clearer streams come.

Brenda Ueland
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
At last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had.

Brenda Ueland
If I did not wear torn pants, orthopedic shoes, frantic disheveled hair, that is to say, if I did not tone down my beauty, people would go mad. Married men would run amuck.

Brenda Ueland
We are always afraid to start something that we want to make very good, true, and serious.

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

Brenda Ueland
The death of any loved parent is an incalculable lasting blow. Because no one ever loves you again like that.

Brenda Ueland
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.

Brenda Ueland
If you are never satisfied with what you write, that is a good sign. It means that your vision can see so far that it's hard to come up to it. Again I say - the only unfortunate people are the glib ones, immediately satisfied with their work. To them, the ocean is only knee-deep.

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

Brenda Ueland
So you see, imagination needs coddling — long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.

Brenda Ueland
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
In true courage there is always an element of choice, of an ethical choice, and of anguish, and also of action and deed. Here is always a flame of spirit in it, a vision of some necessity higher than oneself.

Brenda Ueland
Who are the people, for example, to whom you go for advice? Not to the hard, practical ones who can tell you exactly what to do, but to the listeners; that is, the kindest, least censorious, least bossy people you know. It is because by pouring out your problem to them, you then know what to do about it yourself.

Brenda Ueland
Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do it. It is easy and interesting. It is a privilege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.

Brenda Ueland
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. For true listeners know that if you are bad-tempered it does not mean that you are always so. They don't love you just when you are nice; they love all of you.

Brenda Ueland
People who try to boss themselves always want (however kindly) to boss other people. They always think they know best and are so stern and resolute about it they are not very open to new and better ideas.

Brenda Ueland
The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny.

Brenda Ueland
My motto for child raising: 'Always be careful never to cross a child.'

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

Brenda Ueland
Unless you listen, people are weazened in your presence; they become about a third of themselves. Unless you listen, you can't know anybody. Oh, you will know facts and what is in the newspapers and all of history, perhaps, but you will not know one single person. You know, I have come to think listening is love, that's what it really is.

Brenda Ueland
Why should we all use our creative power?... Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.

Brenda Ueland
Vivisection is not the same thing as scientific progress. There is such a thing as scientific progress. But this wholesale dedication of scientists to vivisection, which is the easy and cheap way, actually prevents them from scientific progress, for true progress is difficult and requires genius and imagination in its devoted workers.

Brenda Ueland