Sherwood Anderson Quotes

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

That's the crazy part about music, that you can just be someone and it means something.

Telling someone about what a symbol means is like telling someone how music should make them feel.

It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world.

I don't want to tell what the songs are about for me, because then people can't decide for themselves, which is why I write; it's for you to find your own meaning in. For me it's my story, for someone else it's theirs; if I tell exactly what it means, then it's only my story.

The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that make one's life.

Music's free and music's for everyone to enjoy and express and interpret. It transcends countries and times and decades.

I feel that works of art are an opportunity for people to construct meaning, so I don't usually tell what they mean. It conveys to people that they have to participate.

Once they're on paper, they're gone. I like to do as much with the words, as far as image goes, so that it's really left open for a lot of things, even though I remember a specific impression of something I had at the time. I can't say a song is about this or that; in fact, I wouldn't even want to. I just prefer to have people live it anyway they want. Because it's theirs after that. There's nothing I can do about it anymore

...I would never choose a subject for what it means to me. I choose a subject and then what I feel about it, what it means, begins to unfold.

Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them.

It's very difficult to know when you're crossing the boundary. I hate the word boundary because I never think about it when taking a picture. Very often it doesn't mean anything because it depends on who's looking at the picture more than the content of the picture itself.

Poets and painters have the power to dare, I mean to dare to do whatever they may approve of.

I've had people explain to me what one of my poems meant, and I've been surprised that it means that to them. If a person can use a poem of mine to interpret her life or his life, good. I can't control that. Nor would I want to.

Play music that means something to you. Make it happen for yourself.

And for an apple damn'd mankind.

I'd like to think that what I've written over the years and what I'm doing now means something to people. People in the street all the time are saying "love the new record" or "I love that record," this tune or that tune. It means an awful lot, or it's been a big part of their lives. As a songwriter, what else would you really want? You're trying to connect with people, people's emotions, and maybe say something about their lives or feelings. That's probably a good enough compliment to receive, really.

There is only one reason for art in America, and that is that the people of America learn the means of expressing themselves in their own time, and their own land.

I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after something that isn't. I have always found moralizing intolerable.

To love something as an artist ... means to be shaken not by its ultimate value or lack of value, but by a side of it that suddenly opens up. Where art has value it shows things that few have seen. It's conquering, not pacifying.

Precocious and eccentric are okay. But I think that people in the arts represent something integral and kind of secretive in everybody else. So the reason people like some artists is because they're saying or doing something that they would like to do or say, but they don't have the balls or the means. People are really afraid to put their ass on the line. Just to put your face on a poster and put your name in big print and say "Come see me," that takes some cojones, you know? Ambition is nothing to be ashamed of.

I think '60s are appealing to creative people, because it seemed to be a time of endless possibilities, when the boundaries of what could be considered popular culture were being expanded almost by the week. It doesn't feel like that anymore. At times, I wish it were so. Radio is a perfect example; good God, I mean, back then the most interesting songs were also hits, and that's just not true anymore. It hasn't been true in a long time.

I haven't got many tattoos, but the two that are most important to me are music tattoos. I have a black heart with a lightning bolt down the middle. And the black heart was for Manson and the lightning bolt down the middle was for David Bowie. I have black diamond with circles that keep swirling and swirling, and it's surrounded by sort of crazy diamonds because Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" really inspired me, and everybody's called me Crazy Diamond since I was a teenager, so it was always important to me.

Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless.

I used to sing like Nat King Cole. I mean he was the guy when I was comin' up, and you know, man, people used to say of me, "Damn, he sure do sound like Nat King Cole." But there was a day, and luckily for me it was early, when I woke up and asked myself, "Well, when are the ask me to sing because I sound like me?" So my advice is, never do anything that you don't like.