Sherwood Anderson Quotes

The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.

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.

Dare to be strong and courageous. That is the road. Venture anything.

You won’t arrive. It is an endless search.

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

The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor.

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.

Wait and wait. Most people's lives are spent waiting.

It may be life is only worthwhile at moments. Perhaps that is all we ought to expect.

I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others.

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.

A man needs a purpose for real health.

There is within every human being a deep well of thinking over which a heavy iron lid is kept clamped.

Dare to be strong and courageous. That is the road. Venture anything. Be brave enough to dare to be loved. Be something more than man or woman. Be Tandy.

When a job is to be done there's no use putting it off.

People keep on getting married. Evidently hope is eternal in the human breast.

The whole object of education is...to develop the mind. The mind should be a thing that works.

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

The life of reality is confused, disorderly, almost always without apparent purpose, whereas in the artist's imaginative life there is purpose. There is determination to give the tale, the song, the painting, form -- to make it true and real to the theme, not to life.

Work accomplished means little. It is in the past. What we all want is the glorious and living present.

I am a lover and have not found my thing to love.

If people did not want their stories told, it would be better for them to keep away from me.

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.

The fools who write articles about me think that one morning I suddenly decided to write and began to produce masterpieces. There is no special trick about writing, or painting either. I wrote constantly for 15 years before I produced anything with any solidity to it.

I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them.