185 Quotes by Sherwood Anderson

In that high place in the darkness the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. "I have come to this lonely place and here is this other," was the substance of the thing felt.

He wanted most of all the people of his own mind, people with whom he could really talk, people he could harangue and scold by the hour, servants, you see, to his fancy. Among these people he was always self-confident and bold. They might talk, to be sure, and even have opinions of their own, but always he talked last and best. He was like a writer busy among the figures of his brain, a kind of tiny blue-eyed king he was, in a six-dollar room facing Washington Square in the city of New York.

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

People in your own family are likely at any moment to do strange, sometimes hurtful things to you. You have to watch them. ~ 182, SA: Sh. Stories, 1962

More absurdity in myself, endless absurdities. My own childishness sometimes amused me. Would it amuse others? Were others like myself, hopelessly childish?

Being alone doesn't mean being where there are no people. It means being where people are all strangers to you. ~ 156, SA: Sh. Stories, 1962

The devil—one might face anything if one but knew what was to be faced! ~117, SA: Sh. Stories, 1962

Questions invaded my mind and I was young and skeptical, wanting to believe in the power of the mind, wanting to believe in the power of intellectual force, terribly afraid of sentimentality in myself and others.

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