Quotes for All
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
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
We start out in our lives as little children, full of light and the clearest vision. Brenda Ueland
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. Brenda Ueland
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
To have the external pressure of a job removed is very astonishing. Your own will is now your only motor and it has no horse-power. Sometimes I think that perhaps the most competent business men, and lawyers and doctors, who must be at the office at nine o’clock every morning, do not realize this and … Read more
We are too ready (women especially) not to stand by what we have said or done. Brenda Ueland
You Do Not Know Is in You— an Inexhaustible Fountain of Ideas. Another reason for writing a diary is to discover that the ideas in you are an inexhaustible fountain. Brenda Ueland
The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty. Brenda Ueland
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. Brenda Ueland