Brenda Ueland
Brenda Ueland
Brenda Uelandwas a journalist, editor, freelance writer, and teacher of writing. She is best known for her book If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth24 October 1891
CountryUnited States of America
work thinking knows
Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do it.
believe writing people
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.
artist want materialistic
... the great artists ... do not want security, egoistic or materialistic.
creative live-in-the-present creative-power
Creative power flourishes only when I am living in the present.
writing talking people
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.
writing blessing thinking
We have come to think that duty should come first. I disagree. Duty should be a by-product. Writing, the creative effort, the use of the imagination, should come first – at least, for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve. Colds will disappear and all the other ailments of discouragement and boredom.
believe writing self
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.
people effort lilies
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.
truth truthful
Be bold, free, and truthful.
children light vision
We start out in our lives as little children, full of light and the clearest vision.
time inspiration doe
Inspiration does not come like a blot, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly all the time.
memories children flower
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.
animal dedication imagination
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.
powerful science animal
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.