Brenda Ueland Quotes

Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two.

The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.

...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.

... the great artists ... do not want security, egoistic or materialistic.

... we have come to think of all idleness as hoggish, not as creative and radiant.

... the only way to become a better writer is to become a better person.

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

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

Families are great murderers of the creative impulse, particularly husbands.

It is so conceited and timid to be ashamed of one's mistakes. Of course they are mistakes. Go on to the next.