Brenda Ueland

Brenda Ueland (October 24, 1891 - March 5, 1985) was a journalist, editor, freelance writer, and teacher of writing. She is best known for her book If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit.

Read more about Brenda Ueland:  Background, Career, Later Years, Personal Life

Famous quotes by brenda ueland:

    “... we have come to think of all idleness as hoggish, not as creative and radiant.”
    —Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)

    “A friend of mine spoke of books that are dedicated like this: ‘To my wife, by whose helpful criticism ...’ and so on. He said the dedication should really read: ‘To my wife. If it had not been for her continual criticism and persistent nagging doubt as to my ability, this book would have appeared in Harper’s instead of The Hardware Age.’”
    —Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)

    “... if women once learn to be something themselves, that the only way to teach is to be fine and shining examples, we will have in one generation the most remarkable and glorious children.”
    —Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)

    “These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas.... But they have no slow, big ideas. And the fewer consoling, noble, shining, free, jovial, magnanimous ideas that come, the more nervously and desperately they rush and run from office to office and up and downstairs, thinking by action at last to make life have some warmth and meaning.”
    —Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)

    “I read ... an article by a highly educated man wherein he told with what conscientious pains he had brought up all his children to be skeptical of everything, never to believe anything in life or religion or their own feelings without submitting it to many rational doubts, to have a persistent, thoroughly skeptical, doubting attitude toward everything.... I think he might as well have taken them out in the backyard and killed them with an ax.”
    —Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)