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
love-you blow parent
the death of any loved parent is an incalculable lasting blow. Because no one ever loves you again like that.
thinking people listening
Unless you listen, people are weazened in your presence; they become about a third of themselves. Unless you listen, you can't know anybody. Oh, you will know facts and what is in the newspapers and all of history, perhaps, but you will not know one single person. You know, I have come to think listening is love, that's what it really is.
art writing creativity
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.
faith children pain
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.
thinking ends fixed
we like fixed rules because that ends thinking and we can rest. But there is no resting place down here.
thinking spirit fountain
... 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.
oil pie boxing
... 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.
change work thinking
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.
running fitness nuts
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!
helping-others imagination people
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.
should duty
Duty should be a byproduct.
writing imagination creative
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. It has done you good.
writing people advertising
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.
letting-go mistake conceited
It is so conceited and timid to be ashamed of one's mistakes. Of course they are mistakes. Go on to the next.