185 Quotes by Sherwood Anderson

Most of us live our lives like toads, sitting perfectly still, under a plantain leaf. We are waiting for a fly to come our way. When it comes out darts the tongue. We nab it.That is all. We eat it.

If our family was poor, of what did our poverty consist? If our clothes were torn the torn places only let in the sun and wind. In the winter we had no overcoats, but that only meant that we ran rather than loitered. Those who are to follow the arts should have a training in what is called poverty.

But these notes make no pretense of being a record of fact. That isn't their object. They are merely notes of impressions, a record of vagrant thoughts, hopes, ideas that have floated through the mind of one present-day American. It is likely that I have not, and will not, put into them one truth, measuring by the ordinary standards of truth. It is my aim to be true to the essence of things. That's what I'm after.

Something seemed to open out. There was a little inner world created, always, every day, being re-created, and in it there was a kind of new security. ~ 186, SA: Sh. Stories, 1962

There was nothing particularly striking about them except that they were artists of the kind that talk. Everyone knows of the talking artists. Throughout all of the known history of the world they have gathered in rooms and talked. They talk of art and are passionately, almost feverishly, in earnest about it. They think it matters much more than it does.

It take time to understand things that happen in life. Life unfolds slowly in the mind. ~192, SA: Sh. Stories, 1962

Most philosophers must have been raised on chicken farms. One hopes for so much from a chicken and is so dreadfully disillusioned. ~ 22

If you have your own kind of power, show your hand. Make the man fear you in you own field. For example, you can write. Your rich man cannot do that. It is quite all right to exercise your own power. Have faith in yourself. ~ 151, SA: Sh. Stories, 1962

Wait and wait. Most people's lives are spent waiting. ~ 147, SA: Sh. Stories, 1962