Quotes from Maxwell Anderson

What the devil's a king but a man, or a queen but a woman?

Will you tell me how a man's to live, and face his life, if he can't believe that truth's like a fire, and will burn through and be seen though it takes all the years there are? While I stand up and have breath in my lungs I shall be one flame of that fire; it's all the life I have.

We ask a great deal of the world at first -- then less -- and then less.

Now can it be men die and carry thence no memory of death, only this curious lightness of the hands, only this curious darkness of the mind, only to be still changeless with the winters passing; not gray, not lined, not stricken down, but stamped forever on the moving air, and echo and an image?

If you practice an art, be proud of it and make it proud of you.... It may break your heart, but it will fill your heart before it breaks it.

The dandelion. Where will you find another prodigal so merry or so golden or so wasteful, pouring out treasure down the sides of hills and cupping it in valleys?

This modern craze for biographical information leaves me cold for many reasons. For one thing, it's always inaccurate; for another, it's so bound up with publicity and other varieties of idiocy that it gags a person of any sensibility. For another, to be heralded is to become a candidate for the newest list of "the busted geniuses of yester-year" of whom I hope never to be one.

The years are long, and full of sharp, wearing days That wear out what we are and what we have been And change us into people we do not know, Living among strangers.

If two stand shoulder to shoulder against the gods, Happy together, the gods themselves are helpless Against them while they stand so.

But I've been walking through the night and the dayTill my eyes get weary and my head turns grey,And sometimes it seems maybe God's gone away,Forgetting the promise that we heard him say—And we're lost out here in the stars—

Oh, it's a long, long while From May to December, But the days grow short, When you reach September.

Oh, the days dwindle downTo a precious few…And these few precious daysI'll spend with you.