Literary Birthday – 13 September – Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson was born on 13 September 1876 and died on 8 March 1941.

Sherwood Anderson Quotes

1. The object of art is not to make saleable pictures. It is to save yourself.
2. I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others.
3. The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. If I can write everything out plainly, perhaps I will myself understand better what has happened.
7. If you are to become a writer you’ll have to stop fooling with words.
8. 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.
9. Most people are afraid to trust their imaginations and the artist is not.

Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer best known for his influential collection Winesburg, Ohio. Anderson worked in advertising and owned several businesses before leaving the business world to pursue writing. His fiction focused on the inner lives of ordinary people and often explored loneliness, frustration, desire, and the difficulty of connecting with others. His distinctive, psychologically focused style helped shape modern American short fiction. Other important collections include The Triumph of the Egg and Death in the Woods. Anderson also wrote novels, essays, poetry, and memoirs. His autobiographical works are A Story Teller’s Story, Tar: A Midwest Childhood, and Sherwood Anderson’s Memoirs. He influenced a younger generation of writers. He encouraged and supported writers including Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, helping both writers publish their early work. Anderson is now regarded as an important figure in the development of modern American literature.

Source for photograph: Carl Van Vechten, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sherwood_Anderson_(1933)_(retouched).jpg
Source for quotes

by Amanda Patterson
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