Quotes from Sherwood Anderson

Above all avoid taking the advice of men who have no brains and do not know what they are talking about.

I am constantly amazed at how little painters know about painting, writers about writing, merchants about business, manufacturers about manufacturing. Most men just drift.

There is a kind of shrewdness many men have that enables them to get money. It is the shrewdness of the fox after the chicken. A low order of mentality often goes with it.

I feel that I am writing out of a full life. I am a rich man, rich in men known, in adventures had. I am rich with living.

To be civilized, really, is to be aware of the others, their hopes, their gladnesses, their illusions about life.

Everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified.

There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood.

The moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it histruth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced a falsehood.

General Grant had a simple childlike recipe for meeting life ... "I am terribly afraid but the other fellow is afraid too."

Don't be carried off your feet by anything because it is modern - the latest thing. Go to the Louvre often and spend a good deal of time before the Rembrandts, the Delacroixs.

There is this thing called life. We live it, not as we intend or wish, but as we are driven on by forces outside and inside ourselves.

People who have few possessions cling tightly to those they have. That is one of the facts that make life so discouraging.

Realism, in so far as the word means reality to life, is always bad art.

Would it not be better to have it understood that realism, in so far as the word means reality to life, is always bad art -- although it may possibly be very good journalism?

You must try to forget all you have learned," said the old man. "You must begin to dream. From this time on you must shut your ears to the roaring of the voices.

All of the people of my time were bound with chains. They had forgotten the long fields and the standing corn. They had forgotten the west winds.

It was a cold day but the sun was out and the trees were like great bonfires against gray distant fields and hills.

Most people are afraid to trust their imaginations and the artist is not.

Everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified.

I wanted to run away from everything but I wanted to run towards something too.

People who have few possessions cling tightly to those they have. That is one of the facts that make life so discouraging.

The lives of people are like young trees in a forest. They are being choked by climbing vines. The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted by dead men.

Father was made for romance. For him there was no such thing as a fact.

I am pregnant with song. My body aches but do not betray me. I will sing songs and hide them away. I will tear them into bits and throw them in the street. The streets of my city are full of dark holes. I will hide my songs in the holes of the streets.