Brenda Ueland Quotes & Sayings

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

Remember William Blake who said: "Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius."
The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up.
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

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

The only way to become a better writer is to become a better person. — 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 way to love a person is ... by listening to them and seeing and believing in the god, in the poet, in them. For by doing this, you keep the god and the poet alive and make it flourish. — Brenda Ueland

[4It is hard to be carefree when you have many anxieties. But the more you have, the more necessary it is to feel carefree for a time, so that you will get some new ideas on how to deal with your anxieties.] — Brenda Ueland

Duty should be a byproduct. — Brenda Ueland

We are always doing something, talking, reading, listening to the radio, planning what next. The mind is kept naggingly busy on some easy, unimportant external thing all day. — Brenda Ueland

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another. — Brenda Ueland

If only I had a wife!" I used to think, "who could stay home and keep the children happy, why I could support six of them. A cinch. — Brenda Ueland

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. — Brenda Ueland

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

At least I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had. Not to preach to them, but to give it to them if they cared to hear it. — Brenda Ueland

Everyone who is human has something to express. Try not expressing yourself for twenty-four hours and see what happens. You will nearly burst. You will want to write a long letter, or draw a picture, or sing, or make a dress or a garden. — 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

Science and vivisection make no appeal to a theological idea, much less a political one. 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

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

Work freely and rollickingly as though you were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters. — Brenda Ueland

Strength to your sword arm! — 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 great artists ... do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. — Brenda Ueland

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

Writing is not a performance but a generosity. — Brenda Ueland

We are too ready (women especially) not to stand by what we have said or done. — Brenda Ueland

A great musician once told me that one should never play a single note without hearing it, feeling that it is true, thinking it beautiful. — Brenda Ueland

They cannot understand that the figure of a laborer - some furrows in a plowed field, a bit of sand, sea and sky - are serious objects, so difficult but at the same time so beautiful, that it is indeed worth while to devote one's life to the task of expressing the poetry hidden in them. — Brenda Ueland

It is when you are really living in the present-working, thinking, lost, absorbed in something you care about very much, that you are living spiritually. — 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

You do not know what is in you - an inexhaustible fountain of ideas. — Brenda Ueland

(about William Blake)
As for Blake's happiness
a man who knew him said: "If asked whether I ever knew among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me."
And yet this creative power in Blake did not come from ambition ... He burned most of his own work. Because he said, "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy."
... He did not mind death in the least. He said that to him it was just like going into another room. On the day of his death he composed songs to his Maker and sang them for his wife to hear. Just before he died his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened and he burst into singing of the things he saw in heaven. — Brenda Ueland

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. The thing to say to such people is: "See how *bad* a story you can write. See how dull you can be. Go ahead. That would be fun and interesting. I will give you ten dollars if you can write something thoroughly dull from beginning to end!" And of course, no one can. — Brenda Ueland

The only way to write well, so that people believe what we say and are interested or touched by it, is to slough off all pretentiousness and attitudinizing. — Brenda Ueland

I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five- or six-mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day. I have done this for many years. It is at these times I seem to get re-charged. If I do not walk one day, I seem to have on the next what van Gogh calls "the meagerness.""The meagerness," he said, "or what is called depression." After a day or two of not walking, when I try to write I feel a little dull and irresolute. For a long time I thought that the dullness was just due to the asphyxiation of an indoor, sedentary life (which all people who do not move around a great deal in the open air suffer from, though they do not know it). — 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

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! — Brenda Ueland

It is only by expressing all that is inside that purer and purer streams come. — 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

All children have creative power. — 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

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. — Brenda Ueland

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

You can write anything you want to,
a six-act blank verse, symbolic tragedy or a vulgar short, short story. Just so that you write it with honesty and gusto, and do not try to make somebody believe that you are smarter than you are. What's the use? You can never be smarter than you are. — Brenda Ueland

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

And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective and learns more and does more good — 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. There is always a flame of spirit in it, a vision of some necessity higher than oneself. — Brenda Ueland

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

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. "Be not anxious for the morrow," and "which of you being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?"
So they dare to be idle, i.e. not to be pressed and duty-driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good. — Brenda Ueland

Consistency is the horror of the world. — Brenda Ueland

The best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it. And what is the purpose of existence Here or Yonder but to discover truth and beauty and express it, i.e., share it with others? — Brenda Ueland

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. — Brenda Ueland

The true self is always in motion like music, a river of life, changing, moving, failing, suffering, learning, shining, — Brenda Ueland

Everyone is talented, original and has something important to say. — Brenda Ueland

Advertising companies hire the very brightest, wittiest young people to write for them. Not one single sentence of it is worth repeating. Why? Because it wasn't meant. — 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

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. — Brenda Ueland

You must become aware of the richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there, so that you can write opulently and with self-trust. If you once become aware of it and have faith in it, you will be all right. — Brenda Ueland

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

Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two. — Brenda Ueland

You know, I have come to think listening is love, that's what it really is. — Brenda Ueland

Inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly and all the time. — 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

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. 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

Don't think of yourself as an intestinal tract and tangle of nerves in the skull, that will not work unless you drink coffee. Think of yourself as incandescent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and his messengers ... Think if Tiffany's made a mosquito, how wonderful we would think it was! — Brenda Ueland

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

Don't always be appraising yourself, wondering if you are better or worse than other writers. "I will not Reason and Compare," said Blake; "my business is to Create." Besides, since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of Time, you are incomparable. — Brenda Ueland

Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands. — Brenda Ueland

Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter,
making us think of funnier and funnier things. — 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

If you write, good ideas must come welling up into you so that you have something to write. If good ideas do not come at once, or for a long time, do not be troubled at all. Wait for them. Put down little ideas no matter how insignificant they are. But do not feel, any more, guilty about idleness and solitude. — Brenda Ueland

To have the external pressure of a job removed is very astonishing. Your own will is now your only motor and it has no horse-power. Sometimes I think that perhaps the most competent business men, and lawyers and doctors, who must be at the office at nine o'clock every morning, do not realize this and take more credit for initiative and industry than they deserve. 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

Be bold, free, and truthful. — Brenda Ueland

Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do it. — Brenda Ueland

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

Yes, 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.
... I hate it because of all the potentially shining, gentle, gifted people of all ages, that it snuffs out every year. It is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the very first ones to get killed off. It is the brutal egotists that survive. — Brenda Ueland

We should all know this: that listening is not talking; [it] is the gifted and great role and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective, and learns more and does more good. 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

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. — Brenda Ueland

Now before going to a party, I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me, to be in their shoes when they talk, to try to know them without my mind pressing against theirs, or arguing, or changing the subject. No. My attitude is: 'Tell me more.' This person is showing me his soul. It is a little dry and meager and full of grinding talk just now, but presently he will begin to think, not just automatically to talk. He will show his true self. Then he will be wonderfully alive.' ... 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

By encouraging the critic in themselves (the hater) they have killed the artist (the lover). — Brenda Ueland

The imagination needs moodling,
long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering. — Brenda Ueland

To paint with oil paints for the first time ... is like trying to make something exquisitely accurate and microscopically clear out of mud pies with boxing gloves on. — Brenda Ueland

In the same way there is much, much in all of us, but we do not know it. No one ever calls it out in us, unless we are lucky enough to know intelligent, imaginative, sympathetic people who love us and have the magnanimity to encourage us, to believe in us, by listening, by praise, by appreciation, by laughing. If you are going to write, you must become aware of this richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there so that you can write opulently with with self-trust. Once you become aware of it, have faith in it, you will be all right. But it is like this: if you have a million dollars in the bank and don't know, it doesn't so you any good. — Brenda Ueland

Try to discover your true, honest, untheoretical self. — 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

Your motto: Be Bold, Be Free, Be Truthful. — Brenda Ueland

When we commit ourselves to writing for some part of each day, we are happier, more enlightened, alive, light-hearted and generous to everyone else. Even our health improves. — Brenda Ueland

Write a true, careless, slovenly impulsive, honest diary every day of your life. — Brenda Ueland

Inspiration comes to us slowly and quietly . prime it with a little solitude. — 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

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. — Brenda Ueland

Think of yourself as an incandescent power, illuminated and perhaps forever talked to by God and his messengers. — 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; whose attitude is:
"Tell me more. Tell me all you can. 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

When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life. — Brenda Ueland

I readan article by a highly educated man wherein he told with what conscientious pains he had brought up all his children tobe skeptical of everything, never to believe anything in life or religion or their own feelings without submitting it to many rational doubts, to have a persistent, thoroughly skeptical, doubting attitude toward everything ... I think he might as well have taken them out in the backyard and killed them with an ax. — Brenda Ueland

Orthodox criticism ... is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the first ones to get killed off. — Brenda Ueland

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

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