I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don't listen to our children, or those we love. And least of all - which is so important, too - to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force...When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.
Brenda Ueland...at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had.
Brenda UelandUnless you listen, people are weazened in your presence; they become about a third of themselves. Unless you listen, you can't know anybody. Oh, you will know facts and what is in the newspapers and all of history, perhaps, but you will not know one single person. You know, I have come to think listening is love, that's what it really is.
Brenda UelandSometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two.
Brenda Uelandthe death of any loved parent is an incalculable lasting blow. Because no one ever loves you again like that.
Brenda Ueland