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People who try to boss themselves always want (however kindly) to boss other people. They always think they know best and are so stern and resolute about it they are not very open to new and better ideas.

Brenda Ueland

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Brenda Ueland
Age: 93 †
Born: 1891
Born: October 24
Died: 1985
Died: March 5
Journalist
Trying
Kindly
Always
Boss
Think
However
Thinking
Opinion
People
Open
Best
Ideas
Stern
Better
Resolute

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Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.
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Consistency is the horror of the world.
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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.
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Inspiration does not come like a blot, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly all the time.
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The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny.
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The writer has a feeling and utters it from his true self. The reader reads it and is immediately infected and has exactly the same feeling. This is the whole secret of enchantment and fascination.
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Why should we all use our creative power....? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.
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... 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.
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Be bold, free, and truthful.
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The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.
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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.
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Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two.
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Inspiration comes to us slowly and quietly . prime it with a little solitude.
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We start out in our lives as little children, full of light and the clearest vision.
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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.
Brenda Ueland
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Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.
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We are always afraid to start something that we want to make very good, true, and serious.
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Don't always be appraising yourself, wondering if you are better or worse than other writers. I will not Reason and Compare, said Blake my business is to Create. Besides, since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of Time, you are incomparable.
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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.
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Write a true, careless, slovenly impulsive, honest diary every day of your life.
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