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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.

Sherwood Anderson

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Sherwood Anderson
Age: 64 †
Born: 1876
Born: September 13
Died: 1941
Died: March 8
Novelist
Writer
Buck Fever
Called
Force
Wish
Live
Intend
Thing
Forces
Life
Driven
Outside
Inside

More quotes by Sherwood Anderson

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I think you know that when an American stays away from New York too long something happens to him. Perhaps he becomes a little provincial, a little dead and afraid.
Sherwood Anderson
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The father spent his time talking and thinking of religion. He proclaimed himself an agnostic and was so absorbed in destroying the ideas of God that had crept into the minds of his neighbors that he never saw God manifesting himself in the little child that, half forgotten, lived here and there on the bounty of her dead mother's relatives.
Sherwood Anderson
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The writing of words can lead to all sorts of absurdities.
Sherwood Anderson
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Work accomplished means little. It is in the past. What we all want is the glorious and living present.
Sherwood Anderson
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Wait and wait. Most people's lives are spent waiting.
Sherwood Anderson
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It was a cold day but the sun was out and the trees were like great bonfires against gray distant fields and hills.
Sherwood Anderson
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Next to occupation is the building up of good taste. That is difficult, slow work. Few achieve it. It means all the difference in the world in the end.
Sherwood Anderson
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If you are to become a writer you'll have to stop fooling with words.
Sherwood Anderson
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Realism, in so far as the word means reality to life, is always bad art.
Sherwood Anderson
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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.
Sherwood Anderson
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I am constantly amazed at how little painters know about painting, writers about writing, merchants about business, manufacturers about manufacturing. Most men just drift.
Sherwood Anderson
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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.
Sherwood Anderson
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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.
Sherwood Anderson
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Those who are to follow the arts should have a training in what is called poverty. Given a comfortable middle-class start in life, the artist is almost sure to end up by becoming a bellyacher, constantly complaining because the public does not rush forward at once to proclaim him.
Sherwood Anderson
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You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.
Sherwood Anderson
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I think that those of us who are what are called intellectuals make a terrible mistake in overvaluing the yen we have for the arts, books, etc. There is a sweet, fine quality in life that has nothing to do with this, and more and more I find myself valuing myself with those people.
Sherwood Anderson
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The machines men are so intent on making have carried them very far from the old sweet things.
Sherwood Anderson
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Everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified.
Sherwood Anderson
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The whole object of education is...to develop the mind. The mind should be a thing that works.
Sherwood Anderson
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You won’t arrive. It is an endless search.
Sherwood Anderson