Sherwood Anderson Quotes

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

And on that evening when we grow older still we'll speak about these two young men as though they were two strangers we met on the train and whom we admire and want to help along. And we'll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts.

A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly.

It can make you sad to look at pictures from your youth. So there's a trick to it. The trick is not to look at the later pictures.

I spent my whole childhood wishing I were older and now I'm spending my adulthood wishing I were younger.

The best years are behind me.

I used to love getting older.

It's stupid, I know, but I care. All the things that meant so much when we were young. Under the blankets late at night, listening to long-distance radio. All those things lost now or broken. Can you remember? Can you remember that feeling? Perhaps I ought to go to a doctor.

The older you get, the better you realize you were.

While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.

When your memories exceed your dreams, the end is near.

In the last few years everything I'd done up to sixty or so has seemed very childish.

While I meditate on the gulf towards which I travelled, and reflect on my youthful disobedience, for these things I weep, mine eye runneth down with water.

Every thought should recall the ruin of a smile.

I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger. I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was stronger

As reason returned to me, memory came with it, and I saw that even on the worst days, when I thought I was utterly and completely miserable, I was nevertheless, and nearly all the time, extremely happy. That gave me something to think about. The discovery was not a pleasant one. It seemed to me that I was losing a great deal. I asked myself, wasn't I sad, hadn't I felt my life breaking up? Yes, that had been true; but each minute, when I stayed without moving in a corner of the room, the cool of the night and the stability of the ground made me breathe and rest on gladness.

It gave me a strange feeling, and the rest of that night I didn’t say much, but merely sat there and drank, trying to decide if I was getting older and wiser, or just plain old.

Flowers so strictly belong to youth, that we adult men soon come to feel, that their beautiful generations concern not us: we havehad our day; now let the children have theirs. The flowers jilt us, and we are old bachelors with our ridiculous tenderness.

It's nine o'clock on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in / There's an old man sitting next to me making love to his tonic and gin / He says, 'Son, can you play me a memory?/ I'm not really sure how it goes / But it's sad and it's sweet, and I knew it complete when I wore a younger man's clothes.'

I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed- why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking.

Sometimes when I play that old six-string, I think about you, wonder what went wrong.

I was 23 when I wrote 'Neighbors,' and I definitely look back at it now and cringe a little bit. I was trying to understand what drama was.

But I had a strong reaction to my first three albums and I struggle with them now, as an adult. It's very much the same as looking at your teenage photos in high school.

One of the saddest things I've ever done is download 'I'm A Teenage Dirtbag' by Wheatus and play along with it with my headphones on. Oh, God. If you were to walk in and see me do that, you would really worry for me.