Quote

Inspiration does not come like a blot, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly all the time.

Brenda Ueland

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Brenda Ueland
Age: 93 †
Born: 1891
Born: October 24
Died: 1985
Died: March 5
Journalist
Comes
Kinetic
Doe
Blot
Come
Striving
Time
Quietly
Like
Slowly
Strive
Inspiration
Energy

More quotes by Brenda Ueland

Image
Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.
Brenda Ueland
Image
Think of yourself as incandescent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and his messengers.
Brenda Ueland
Image
it is only by expressing all that is inside that purer and purer streams come. ... Pour out the dull things on paper too-you can tear them up afterward-for only then do the bright ones come. If you hold back the dull things, you are certain to hold back what is clear and beautiful and true and lively.
Brenda Ueland
Image
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.
Brenda Ueland
Image
... when I am really alone some power seems to grow in me. ... Conjugality made me think of a three-legged race, where two people cannot go fast and keep tripping each other because their two legs are tied together.
Brenda Ueland
Image
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.
Brenda Ueland
Image
If you write, good ideas must come welling up into you so that you have something to write. If good ideas do not come at once, or for a long time, do not be troubled at all. Wait for them. Put down little ideas no matter how insignificant they are. But do not feel, any more, guilty about idleness and solitude.
Brenda Ueland
Image
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.
Brenda Ueland
Image
Consistency is the horror of the world.
Brenda Ueland
Image
Be bold, free, and truthful.
Brenda Ueland
Image
The imagination needs moodling,--long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.
Brenda Ueland
Image
The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.
Brenda Ueland
Image
Who are the people, for example, to whom you go for advice? Not to the hard, practical ones who can tell you exactly what to do, but to the listeners that is, the kindest, least censorious, least bossy people you know. It is because by pouring out your problem to them, you then know what to do about it yourself.
Brenda Ueland
Image
These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas, such as: I see where I can make an annual cut of $3.47 in my meat budget. But they have no slow, big ideas.
Brenda Ueland
Image
it is when you are really living in the present-working, thinking, lost, absorbed in something you care about very much, that you are living spiritually.
Brenda Ueland
Image
Self-trust is so important. When you launch on a story, make your neck loose, feel free, good-natured. And be lazy. Feel that you are going to throw it away. Try writing utterly unplanned stories and see what comes out.
Brenda Ueland
Image
Inspiration comes to us slowly and quietly . prime it with a little solitude.
Brenda Ueland
Image
If you would shut your door against the children for an hour a day and say: 'Mother is working on her five-act tragedy in blank verse!' you would be surprised how they would respect you. They would probably all become playwrights.
Brenda Ueland
Image
The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny.
Brenda Ueland
Image
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.
Brenda Ueland