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If You Want to Write

Book by Brenda Ueland · 50 quotes · Writing, Thinking, People

This book offers practical advice and insights on how to develop a writing habit, overcome writer's block, and refine one's craft.

Book detail: If You Want to Write is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.

This book offers practical advice and insights on how to develop a writing habit, overcome writer's block, and refine one's craft.

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All Writing Thinking People Ifs Knows Self Imagination Trying Creative Creativity Should Feelings Important True Self Art Ashamed Believe Children Feels Firsts

If You Want to Write Quotes

“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.”

People Thinking Littles I Can Ideas Bigs Cutting Busy Budgets Meat Mice Annuals Big Ideas

Book:If You Want to Write

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“everyone who is human has something to express. Try not expressing yourself for twenty-four hours and see what happens. You will nearly burst. You will want to write a long letter, or draw a picture, or sing, or make a dress or a garden.”

Want Writing Trying Humans Long Happens Humanity Hours Four Communication Draws Garden Letters Twenties Dresses Express Yourself

Book:If You Want to Write

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

Way Writing Persons Better Person

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“We are always doing something, talking, reading, listening to the radio, planning what next. The mind is kept naggingly busy on some easy, unimportant external thing all day.”

Mind Reading Next Easy Talking Listening Busy Radio Planning Unimportant

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“The true self is always in motion like music, a river of life, changing, moving, failing, suffering, learning, shining.”

Self Moving Suffering Failing Rivers Shining Life Changing True Self

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“Consistency is the horror of the world.”

World Horror Routine Consistency

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“I hate orthodox criticism. I don't mean great criticism, like that of Matthew Arnold and others, but the usual small niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which thinks it can improve people by telling them where they are wrong, and results only in putting them in straitjackets of hesitancy and self-consciousness, and weazening all vision and bravery.”

People Thinking Mean Self Hate Results Consciousness Vision Criticism I Hate Bravery Orthodox Usual Self Consciousness Matthew Fussy

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“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.”

Ifs Thinking Change Work Personality Something Better

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“Orthodox criticism ... is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the first ones to get killed off.”

People Firsts Helping Imagination Talent Criticism Helping Others Sensitive Orthodox Modest Murderer Helping Other People

Book:If You Want to Write

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“Duty should be a byproduct.”

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“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.”

Thinking Moments Care Lost Live In The Moment Live In The Present Really Living

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“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.”

People Thinking Knows Want Trying Ideas Opinion Boss Resolute

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“So remember these two things: you are talented and you are original. Be sure of that. I say this because self-trust is one of the very most important things in writing.”

Writing Two Important Self Remember Originals Important Things Two Things Self Trust

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“Now some people when they sit down to write and nothing special comes, no good ideas, are so frightened that they drink a lot of strong coffee to hurry them up, or smoke packages of cigarettes, or take drugs or get drunk. They do not know that ideas come slowly, and that the more clear, tranquil and unstimulated you are, the slower the ideas come, but the better they are.”

People Knows Writing Ideas Strong Clear Special Drink Drug Coffee Drunk Smoke Frightened Good Ideas Cigarette Packages Tranquil

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“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.”

Ifs Knows Writing Believe Self Have Faith Richness Self Trust

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“We are too ready (women especially) not to stand by what we have said or done.”

Said Done Ready Cowardice

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“Don't think of yourself as an intestinal tract and tangle of nerves in the skull, that will not work unless you drink coffee. Think of yourself as incandescent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and his messengers.... Think if Tiffany's made a mosquito, how wonderful we would think it was!”

Ifs Thinking Made Forever Wonderful Human Nature Drink Coffee Nerves Think Of You Skulls Messengers Mosquitoes Tiffany's

Book:If You Want to Write

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

Thinking Knows Work

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“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.”

Feels Writing Trying Important Self Stories Necks Lazy Self Trust

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“... to paint with oil paints for the first time ... is like trying to make something exquisitely accurate and microscopically clear out of mud pies with boxing gloves on.”

Trying Firsts Clear First Time Paint Oil Boxing Accurate Pie Mud Gloves Boxing Gloves Mud Pies

Book:If You Want to Write

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“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.”

People Writing Ends Talking Audience Polite

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“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.”

Self Whole Feelings Secret Reader True Self Fascination Enchantment

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“When you will, make a resolution, set your jaw, you are expressing an imaginative fear that you won't do the thing. If you knew you would do the thing, you would smile happily and set about it. And this fear (since the imagination is always creative) comes about presently and you slide down into the complete slump of several weeks or years - the very thing you dreaded and set your jaw against.”

Ifs Years Imagination Creative Week Resolution Imaginative Slides Slumps

Book:If You Want to Write

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“Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would still keep on writing.”

Ifs Writing Art Stills Certain Creativity Cents

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.”

Feels Should Writing Children Joy Lord Creativity Mountain Kindergarten Beads Mountain Top Byron

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“The imagination needs moodling,--long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.”

Needs Long Happiness Imagination Creativity My Imagination Imagination And Creativity

Book:If You Want to Write

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“We have come to think that duty should come first. I disagree. Duty should be a by-product. Writing, the creative effort, the use of the imagination, should come first – at least, for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve. Colds will disappear and all the other ailments of discouragement and boredom.”

Source: If You Want to Write

“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.”

Writing Done Feelings Imagination Creative Waste Sentences Wasting Time Creative Work

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“The only way to write well, so that people believe what we say and are interested or touched by it, is to slough off all pretentiousness and attitudinizing.”

People Way Writing Believe Wells Touched Pretentiousness Slough

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.”

Giving Littles Doe Inspiration Imagination Chance Creativity Solitude Creating Strive Intuition Prime Idleness Energetic Bolts

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“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.”

Ifs Thinking Should Self Speak Originals Telling The Truth True Self

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny; whose attitude is: "Tell me more. Tell me all you can. I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out." And if you have no such friend,--and you want to write,--well, then you must imagine one.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Want Feels Writing Wells Important Interesting Attitude Teacher Imagine Love You Good Teacher

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“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.”

People Courses Effort Fairness Lilies Craftsman

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

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

People Writing Feelings Lasts Share Understood Impulse

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

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

Writing Performances Generosity

Book:If You Want to Write

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“Remember William Blake who said: "Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius." The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up. But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible--villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word”

Knows Believe Made Said Seems Remember Fiction Strange Genius Hero Truth Is Ordinary Improvement Unexpected Etc Villain Splendid Glamorous Crooked Heroines Plausible Blake

Book:If You Want to Write

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

People Thinking Knows Laughing Know How Laughter

Book:If You Want to Write

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“Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.”

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“There is that American pastime known as "kidding" - with the result that everyone is ashamed and hangdog about showing the slightest enthusiasm or passion or sincere feeling about anything.”

Feelings Passion Results Known Enthusiasm Ashamed Sincere Pastime

Book:If You Want to Write

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“Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable.”

Inspirational Acceptance Unique Individuality Uniqueness Incomparable

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“We start out in our lives as little children, full of light and the clearest vision.”

Children Littles Light Vision Our Lives

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“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.”

People Should Art Use Joy Fighting Compassion Creative Objects Generous Compassionate Joyful Indifferent Accumulation Lively Creative Power

Book:If You Want to Write

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

Art Courses Next Mistake Goes On Letting Go Ashamed Conceited

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“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.”

People Writing Young Company Sentences Advertising Single Sentence Wittiest

Book:If You Want to Write

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“Be bold, free, and truthful.”

Truth Freedom Truthful

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“Know that it is good to work. Work with love, and think of liking it when you do it. It is easy and interesting. It is a privilege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.”

Thinking Knows Love Hard Passion Easy Work Interesting Privilege Vanity Anxious Fear Of Failure

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five or six mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day.”

Long Helping Walks Creativity Five Six Miles I Have Learned

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“The true self is always in motion like music, a river of life, changing, moving, failing, suffering, learning, shining. That is why you must freely and recklessly make new mistakes - in writing or in life - and do not fret about them but pass on and write more.”

Writing Self Moving Suffering Mistake Failing Rivers Shining Life Changing True Self

Book:If You Want to Write

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

Creative Husband Murderer Impulsive

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“The best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it.”

Knows Way Trying Best Way

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

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