Brenda Ueland Quotes

Inspiration comes to us slowly and quietly . prime it with a little solitude.

To have the ability to withdraw into oneself and forget everything around one when one is creating - What, I think is the only requirement for being able to bring forth something beautiful. The whole thing is - a mystery.

To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence.

It is important from time to time to slow down, to go away by yourself, and simply be.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

I like to draw late at night when the house is quiet.

Solitude is creativity's best friend, and solitude is refreshment for our souls.

My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold, and anything else is just a waste of time.

The one happiness is to shut one's door upon a little room, with a table before one, and to create; to create life in that isolation from life.

I'm really happy when I'm actively creating things. When I'm frustrated and not excited, it's because I haven't written anything in a month or so.

Writing in my closet, it's a small space but it made a lot of room in my mind.

When you open your mind up, and you go into a creative state, you can't just switch if off. When you have an idea, a creative impulse, and then you ignore it, it can keep you up when you just want to go to your bed - which is why it's great to have voice recorders on your phone!

As in a love affair, two creative people can destroy themselves trying to recapture that youthful spirit, at twenty-one or twenty-four, of creating without even being aware of how it's happening

I don't understand how people live without creating.

I used to be really into traditional meditation, but I found that creating new music is the best meditation. When I'm able to get into that space, nothing else matters, and I'm just a vessel for whatever the message is; I feel like I'm not in control. It's like this organic communication, and I feel like that is the quiet, in a way.

My creative life is a constant struggle to achieve a balance between letting things flow in and letting things flow out.

I'm a bit like a sponge. When I'm not writing I absorb life like water. When I write I squeeze the sponge a little - and out comes, not water but ink.

Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln never saw a movie, heard a radio or looked at television. They had 'Loneliness' and knew what to do with it. They were not afraid of being lonely because they knew that was when the creative mood in them would work.

Real creativity comes only out of silence.

1. Always wait between books for the springs to fill up and flow over. 2. Always preserve within a wild sanctuary, an inaccessible valley of reveries. 3. Always, and as far as it is possible, endeavor to touch life on every side; but keep the central vision of the mind, the inmost light, untouched and untouchable.

My discussion with Keith Richards about the creative process led me to believe that there's an invisible presence of a stream of ever-flowing creativity that we overhear-all you have to do is pull up the antenna and dial it in. This presence allows you to maintain your sense of origin and move forward.

I think loneliness comes with being creative, because you are obsessed with creation. And it is so satisfying that sometimes, I have noticed, I completely neglect my friends and my family, and they fall away.

As much as I love performing, nothing juices me up creatively like being in my own studio for an extended period. Songs, ideas, even paintings are pouring out of me. My inspiration and usual subject matter: life.

And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it.

If I get ideas independently of the act of writing, they never really fit. So for me, there's no hanging out, waiting for inspiration.