Brenda Ueland Quotes

Don't write slogans, write truths.

If you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses dont go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

The best writing has no lace on its sleeves.

Good writing is about telling the truth.

Acting is no longer about lying. It's now about revealing the truth. People are at ease with me now. Honesty is the best policy.

No matter how true I believe what I am writing to be, if the reader cannot also participate in that truth, then I have failed.

I'm trying to speak--to write-the truth. I"m trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.

Acting is the absence of acting. It's believing in the truth of the moment you are creating.

Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real.

I'm a big believer in playing truth and not doing things for effect. It's not about whether you look pretty or glamorous. It's about whether people connect.

When you have the goods, you don't need to dress up what you're writing.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

All good writers speak in honest voices and tell the truth.

Music to me is about being honest, and it's what I've always pictured music as. I don't see the point of expressing yourself if you are going to be cryptic about it.

Even when I do commercials, I try to tell a story about the product. With music, I try to tell the story of the person's struggle for success. And I believe every word I say. I never read anything on the air I don't believe in. I think people sense that about me, and they respond to it.

One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth.

For truth has such a face and such a mien, as to be loved needs only to be seen.

When somebody asks me a question, I try to be as straightforward about it as possible. I try not to overthink what I'm going to say in an interview.

It does not require many words to speak the truth.

The truth needs so little rehearsal.

The words of truth are simple.

I think anything that is expressed directly and as honestly as possible will last.

There are many crooked lines and one straight line. Which is the line of truth? Why the straight line? Truth is always the shortest distance between two points.

It is always easier to write from the heart and deal with things in the present.