Brenda Ueland Quotes

You feel the call. That's the important thing. Now answer it as fully as you can. Take the risk to let all that is in you, out. Escape into the open.

I've always used poetry to explain myself to myself. These things just sat in my psyche and then came out.

In every role, a part of me gets to come out.

My interest lies in my self-expression - what's inside of me - not what I'm in.

The more I push myself to really live and really experience things and step outside of my comfort zone, the more the songs are allowed to flow.

Everything I've written has been personal and touched on things that I needed to deal with in my personal life. So I just feel that writing is great therapy, and the best writing comes from truth, and so I mine my life constantly for that.

I like to write when I feel I'm the real me.

I wanted to make the album I always needed to make. I had to say the things I never could.

At school, I was always daydreaming and fiddling in inkwells, but I had to learn to grow up and become articulate. And doing that was what brought me into writing songs. It's like therapy for me, because it exposes what I'm really thinking.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

Victory doesn't lie in taming our nature but in progressively discovering and revealing more of it.

If I hold back any part of me, I suppress that much energy and potential. The question I want to ask myself now is not what behavior is good or bad, but in what ways would I express myself with greater energy if I didn't hold back.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn't express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

Writing is about bringing something from inside you that you're trying to say, and not just trying to say something to please someone else.

I've never been about just trying to do what works. I've been about trying to authentically express how I feel.

I don't even really try to do something different. I just do what's authentic to me.

If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. If you do not bring it forth, it will destroy you.

It is the individual voice, present to itself, that needs to be heard. We need to hear the process of the musician working on himself. We don't need to hear who is more clever with synthesizers. Our cleverness has created the world we live in, which in many ways, we're sorry about.

All good work requires self-revelation.

It is part of me; I could definitely be that if I wanted to, I just choose not to. I mean, I am an actress at my core, and I think we're all a little crazy.

There's times when I'm really shy, so these roles that I get to play, they're how I would love to really be. And that's why I love doing stand-up, because it gives me the freedom to say what I really want to say. I think that's why it's my favorite thing to do.

It was during this [as a kid] time that I came out of my shell vocally and performance wise, I learned how to really and truly sing in a different way.... my way. It was an amazing experience because I also realized my lifelong dream - to sing my own songs...I have something to say and it was a great release for me to share that part of myself with others.

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.

Become aware of what is in you. Announce it, pronounce it, produce it, and give birth to it.

Create yourself. Be yourself your poem.