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My Father, A Ruined Dandy From The South, Had Been Reduced To Keeping A Small Harness-repair Shop And, When That Failed, He Became Ostensibly A House-and-barn Painter. However, He Did Not Call Himself A House-painter. The Idea Was Not Flashy Enough For Him. He Called Himself A "sign-writer.

-Sherwood Anderson

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My Father, A Ruined

Sherwood Anderson

...

My Father, A Ruined Dandy From The South, Had Been Reduced To Keeping A Small Harness-repair Shop And, When That Failed, He Became Ostensibly A House-and-barn Painter. However, He Did Not Call Himself A House-painter. The Idea Was Not Flashy Enough For Him. He Called Himself A "sign-writer.

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Dare To Be Strong And Courageous. That Is The Road. Venture Anything.

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As Time Passed And He Grew To Know People Better, He Began To Think Of Himself As An Extraordinary Man, One Set Apart From His Fellows. He Wanted Terribly To Make His Life A Thing Of Great Importance, And As He Looked About At His Fellow Men And Saw How Like Clods They Lived It Seemed To Him That He Could Not Bear To Become Also Such A Clod.

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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.

You Won’t Arrive. It Is An Endless Search.

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 We Ran Rather Than Loitered.

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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?

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.

Sometimes I Think We Americans Are The Loneliest People In The World. To Be Sure, We Hunger For The Power Of Affection, The Self-acceptance That Gives Life. It Is The Oldest And Strongest Hunger In The World. But Hungering Is Not Enough.

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.

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.

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The Eighteen Years He Has Lived Seem But A Moment, A Breathing Space In The Long March Of Humanity. Already He Hears Death Calling. With All His Heart He Wants To Come Close To Some Other Human, Touch Someone With His Hands, Be Touched By The Hand Of Another.

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The Whole Object Of Education Is...to Develop The Mind. The Mind Should Be A Thing That Works.

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I Have Seldom Written A Story, Long Or Short, That I Did Not Have To Write And Rewrite. There Are Single Stories Of Mine That Have Taken Me Ten Or Twelve Years To Get Written.

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I Had A World, And It Slipped Away From Me. The War Blew Up More Than The Bodies Of Men....it Blew Ideas Away.

It Is All Right You're Saying You Do Not Need Other People, But There Are A Lot Of People Who Need You.

Wait And Wait. Most People's Lives Are Spent Waiting.

If You Are To Become A Writer You'll Have To Stop Fooling With Words.

What Is To Be Got At To Make The Air Sweet, The Ground Good Under The Feet, Can Only Be Got At By Failure, Trial, Again And Again And Again Failure.

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.

Wait And Wait. Most People's Lives Are Spent Waiting.

Father Was Made For Romance. For Him There Was No Such Thing As A Fact.

Above All Avoid Taking The Advice Of Men Who Have No Brains And Do Not Know What They Are Talking About.

Most People Are Afraid To Trust Their Imaginations And The Artist Is Not.

I Wanted To Run Away From Everything But I Wanted To Run Towards Something Too.

Nothing Gives Quite The Satisfaction That Doing Things Brings.

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.

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From Being Quite Sure Of Himself And His Future He Becomes Not At All Sure. If He Be An Imaginative Boy A Door Is Torn Open And For The First Time He Looks Out Upon The World, Seeing, As Though They Marched In Procession Before Him, The Countless Figures Of Men Who Before His Time Have Come Out Of Nothingness Into The World, Lived Their Lives And Again Disappeared Into Nothingness. The Sadness Of Sophistication Has Come To The Boy.

Only The Few Know The Sweetness Of The Twisted Apples.

The Eighteen Years He Has Lived Seem But A Moment, A Breathing Space In The Long March Of Humanity. Already He Hears Death Calling. With All His Heart He Wants To Come Close To Some Other Human, Touch Someone With His Hands, Be Touched By The Hand Of Another.

Breathing Space

The Disease We All Have And That We Have To Fight Against All Our Lives Is ... The Disease Of Self.

It Might Be That Women Who Have Beennurses Should Not Marry Physicians. They Have Too Much Respect For Physicians, Are Taughtto Have Too Much Respect

Love Is Like A Wind Stirring The Grass Beneath Trees On A Black Night,' He Had Said. 'you Must Not Try To Make Love Definite. It Is The Divine Accident Of Life. If You Try To Be Definite And Sure About It And To Live Beneath The Trees, Where Soft Night Winds Blow, The Long Hot Day Of Disappointment Comes Swiftly And The Gritty Dust From Passing Wagons Gathers Upon Lips Inflamed And Made Tender By Kisses.

I Am A Lover And Have Not Found My Thing To Love. That Is A Big Point If You Know Enough To Realize What I Mean. It Makes My Destruction Inevitable, You See. There Are Few Who Understand That.

I Am A Lover And Have Not Found My Thing To Love. That Is A Big Point If You Know Enough To Realize What I Mean. It Makes My Destruction Inevitable, You See. There Are Few Who Understand That.

On The Trees Are Only A Few Gnarled Apples That The Pickers Have Rejected. They Look Like The Knuckles Of Doctor Reefy's Hands. One Nibbles At Them And They Are Delicious. Into A Little Round Place At The Side Of The Apple Has Been Gathered All Its Sweetness. One Runs From Tree To Tree Over The Frosted Ground Picking The Gnarled, Twisted Apples And Filling His Pockets With Them. Only The Few Know The Sweetness Of The Twisted Apples.

Above All Avoid Taking The Advice Of Men Who Have No Brains And Do Not Know What They Are Talking About.

Realism, In So Far As The Word Means Reality To Life, Is Always Bad Art.

What Is To Be Got At To Make The Air Sweet, The Ground Good Under The Feet, Can Only Be Got At By Failure, Trial, Again And Again And Again Failure.

Draw Things That Have Some Meaning To You. An Apple, What Does It Mean? The Object Drawn Doesn't Matter So Much. It's What You Feel About It, What It Means To You. A Masterpiece Could Be Made Of A Dish Of Turnips.

There Is A Note That Comes Into The Human Voice By Which You May Know Real Weariness. It Comes When One Has Been Trying With All His Heart And Soul To Think His Way Along Some Difficult Road Of Thought. Of A Sudden He Finds Himself Unable To Go On. Something Within Him Stops. A Tiny Explosion Takes Place. He Bursts Into Words And Talks, Perhaps Foolishly. Little Side Currents Of His Nature He Didn't Know Were There Run Out And Get Themselves Expressed. It Is At Such Times That A Man Boasts, Uses Big Words, Makes A Fool Of Himself In General.

You Won’t Arrive. It Is An Endless Search.

I Know About Her, Although She Has Never Crossed My Path," He Said Softly. "i Know About Her Struggles And Her Defeats. It Is Because Of Her Defeats That She Is To Me The Lovely One. Out Of Her Defeats She Has Been Born A New Quality In Woman. I Have A Name For It. I Call It Tandy. I Made Up The Name When I Was A True Dreamer And Before My Body Became Vile. It Is The Quality Of Being Strong To Be Loved. It Is Something Men Need From Women And That They Do Not Get.

What's Wrong With This Egotism? If A Man Doesn't Delight In Himself And The Force In Him And Feel That He And It Are Wonders, How Is All Life To Become Important To Him?

It Is Apparent That Nations Cannot Exist For Us. They Are The Playthings Of Children, Such Toys As Children Break From Boredom And Weariness. The Branch Of A Tree Is My Country. My Freedom Sleeps In A Mulberry Bush. My Country Is In The Shivering Legs Of A Little Lost Dog.

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.

Whereas God, For Reasons Of His Own, Sometimes Chooses To Let The Machine Answer. 'the Supreme Being Is Unavailable To Come To The Phone At This Time, But He Wants You To Know What Your Call Is Important To Him. In The Meantime, For Sins Of Pride, Press One. For Avarice, Press Two.

I Am Constantly Amazed At How Little Painters Know About Painting, Writers About Writing, Merchants About Business, Manufacturers About Manufacturing. Most Men Just Drift.

Realism, In So Far As The Word Means Reality To Life, Is Always Bad Art.

Draw, Draw, Hundreds Of Drawings. Try To Remain Humble. Smartness Kills Everything.

As Time Passed And He Grew To Know People Better, He Began To Think Of Himself As An Extraordinary Man, One Set Apart From His Fellows. He Wanted Terribly To Make His Life A Thing Of Great Importance, And As He Looked About At His Fellow Men And Saw How Like Clods They Lived It Seemed To Him That He Could Not Bear To Become Also Such A Clod.

A Man Needs A Purpose For Real Health.

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.

It Has Long Been My Desire To Be A Little Worm In The Fair Apple Of Progress.

All Good New Orleanians Go To Look At The Mississippi At Least Once A Day. At Night It Is Like Creeping Into A Dark Bedroom To Look At A Sleeping Child--something Of That Sort--gives You The Same Warm Nice Feeling, I Mean.

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.

You Can Make A Killing As A Playwright In America, But You Can't Make A Living.

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.

When A Man Publishes A Book, There Are So Many Stupid Things Said That He Declares He'll Never Do It Again. The Praise Is Almost Always Worse Than The Criticism.

Friends You Have, People You Love, Die And Are Born Again.

You Can Make A Killing As A Playwright In America, But You Can't Make A Living.

Dare To Be Strong And Courageous. That Is The Road. Venture Anything.

I Am A Little Thing, A Tiny Little Thing On The Vast Prairies. I Know Nothing. My Mouth Is Dirty. I Cannot Tell What I Want. My Feet Are Sunk In The Black Swampy Land, But I Am A Lover. I Love Life. In The End Love Shall Save Me.

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.

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.

The Disease We All Have And That We Have To Fight Against All Our Lives Is ... The Disease Of Self.

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.

It Is No Use. I Find It Impossible To Work With Security Staring Me In The Face.

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.

Work Accomplished Means Little. It Is In The Past. What We All Want Is The Glorious And Living Present.

He Thought About Himself And To The Young That Always Brings Sadness.

Her Thoughts Ran Away To Her Girlhood With Its Passionate Longing For Adventure And She Remembered The Arms Of Men That Had Held Her When Adventure Was A Possible Thing For Her. Particularly She Remembered One Who Had For A Time Been Her Lover And Who In The Moment Of His Passion Had Cried Out To Her More Than A Hundred Times, Saying The Same Words Madly Over And Over: "you Dear! You Dear! You Lovely Dear!" The Words, She Thought, Expressed Something She Would Have Liked To Have Achieved In Life.

Only The Few Know The Sweetness Of The Twisted Apples.

If I Can Write Everything Out Plainly, Perhaps I Will Myself Understand Better What Has Happened.

It May Be Life Is Only Worthwhile At Moments. Perhaps That Is All We Ought To Expect.

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