Brenda Ueland, If You Want To Write: A Book About Art, Independence And Spirit Quotes

Work freely and rollickingly as though you were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters.

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

...writing is not a performance but a generosity.

Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his *true* self and not from the self he thinks he *should* be.

...at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had.

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.

...the best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it. And what is the purpose of existence Here or Yonder but to discover truth and beauty and express it, i.e., share it with others?

By encouraging the critic in themselves (the hater) they have killed the artist (the lover).

At least I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had. Not to preach to them, but to give it to them if they cared to hear it.

Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter, --making us think of funnier and funnier things.