Quotes from Dorothea Brande

Old habits are strong and jealous. They will not be displaced easily if they get any warning that such plans are afoot; they will fight for their existence with subtlety and persuasiveness.

To guarantee success, act as if it were impossible to fail.

Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.

there is just one contribution which every one of us can make: we can give into the common pool of experience some comprehension of the world as it looks to each of us.

My own experience has been that there is no field where one who is in earnest about learning to do good work can make such enormous strides in so short a time.

Every book, every editor, every teacher will tell you that the great key to success in authorship is originality

Most of the methods of training the conscious side of the writer-the craftsman and the critic in him- are actually hostile to the good of the artist's side; and the converse of this proposition is likewise true. But it is possible to train both sides of the character to work in harmony, and the first step in that education is to consider that you must teach yourself not as though you were one person, but two.

The first exercise is to spend an hour every day without saying anything except in answer to direct questions.

Talk for fifteen minutes a day without using I, me, my, mine.

Whatever the ostensible purpose may be, it is plain that one motive is at work in all these cases: the intention, often unconscious, to fill life so full of secondary activities or substitute activities that there will be no time in which to perform the best work of which one is capable. The intention, in short, is to fail.

The correction of the "I mean," the "As a matter of fact" habit, takes cooperation. If you realize that you have picked up a verbal mannerism, call on the friend to whom you talk most fluently and emotionally. It is fairly easy to control such a mannerism in the presence of someone we hardly know, but in the heat of discourse the offending phrase will crop up in every other sentence.

An alternative method is this: from time to time give yourself a day on which you say "Yes" to every request made of you which is at all reasonable. The more you tend to retire from society in your leisure, the more valuable this will be.

If you can discover what you like, if you can discover what you truly believe about most of the major matters of life, you will be able to write a story which is honest and original and unique.

it is the sum of small things successfully done that lifts a life out of bondage to the humdrum.

So long as new ideas are created, sales will continue to reach new highs.

Most writers flourish greatly on a simple, healthy routine with occasional time off for gaiety.

A problem clearly stated is a problem half solved.

The Wright brothers flew through the smoke screen of impossibility.

All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail. That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right about face which turns us from failure to success.

Envisioning the end is enough to put the means in motion.

Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.

There are seeds of self-destruction in all of us that will bear only unhappiness if allowed to grow.

Act boldly and unseen forces will come to your aid.