Quotes from Brenda Ueland

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. With every sentence you write, you have learned something.

Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable.

everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.

Ch X Title Why Women who do too much house work should neglect it for their writing

With every sentence you write, you have learned something.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Everybody is talented, original, and has something important to say.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Be bold, free, and truthful.

The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you.