Quotes from Brenda Ueland

For when you come to think of it, the only way to love a person is not, as the stereotyped Christian notion is, to coddle them and bring them soup when they are sick, but 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.

The only way to find your true self is by recklessness and freedom.

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.

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

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.]

no writing is a waste of time--no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work.

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

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

Enthusiasm! this is the sign that the creative fountain is in you. "Enthusiasm is the All in All," said Blake. I must tell you this often.]

Strength to your sword arm!

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.

Well, van Gogh was one of the great painters. During his life he made only 109 dollars in all on his paintings. They are now worth about two million dollars. He had a terribly hard life—loneliness, poverty, and starvation that led to insanity. And yet it was one of the greatest lives that was ever lived—the happiest, the most burningly incandescent

But here is an important thing: you must practice not perfunctorily, but with all your intelligence and love,

you will never know what your husband looks like unless you try to draw him, and you will never understand him unless you try to write his story.

The only way to become a better writer is to become a better person

Your motto: Be Bold, be Free, be Truthful

In her 93 remarkable years, Brenda Ueland published six million words. She said she had two rules she followed absolutely: to tell the truth, and not to do anything she didn't want to do.

I hate it not so much on my own account, for I have learned at last not to let it balk me. But I hate it because of the potentially shining, gentle, gifted people of all ages, that it snuffs out every year. It is a murderer of talent.

Now this creative power I think is the Holy Ghost. My theology may not be very accurate, but that is how I think of it. I know that William Blake called this creative power the Imagination, and he said it was God.

Now Blake thought that this creative power should be kept alive in all people for all of their lives. And so do I. Why? Because it is life itself. It is the Spirit. In fact it is the only important thing about us. The rest of us is legs and stomach, materialistic cravings and fears.

That is why I hope you can keep up this continuity and sit for some time every day (if only for half hour, though two hours is better and five is remarkable and eight is bliss and transfiguration!) before your typewriter,- if not writing the just thoughtfully pulling your hair. (...) It takes an hour or two of vacant moodling, when nothing at all comes out on paper; and this is difficult always because it makes us (...) with our accomplishment-mania, feel uneasy and guilty.

It is our nasty twentieth-century materialism that makes us feel: what is the use of writing, painting, etc., unless one has an audience or gets cash for it? Socrates and the men of the Renaissance did so much because the rewards were intrinsic, i.e., the enlargement of the soul.

I want to assure you with all earnestness that no writing is a waste of time—no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work.

Why Women Who Do Too Much Housework Should Neglect It for Their Writing