Brenda Ueland's gems from If You Want to Write

"The imagination needs noodling -- long inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering. 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."

On why the creative power inside of us should be kept alive: "Why? Because it is life itself. It is the spirit. In fact, it is the only important thing about us. The rest of us is legs and stomach, materialistic cravings and fears."

"...daily life, so much of which is nervous cacophonous, where one's attention is unhappily jerked from this to that, so that the imagination inside cannot accumulate its strength and light."

"Do not forget to keep recharging yourself as children do, with a new thinking called 'inspiration.'"