Sherwood Anderson Quotes

I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.

I became conflicted in my late teens.

A conscience is a troublesome thing at times. I woke up at 4 o'clock this morning and I spent the time feeling what a nothing I was, and wishing I was so very different. Then the morning's post brought me a letter from a friend, saying I was so this, so that - it made me really cry, I was so grateful.

You are at the same time arrogant and self-loathing. You are a puzzle. But the ancient truth remains: as the light grows dimmer, things begin to become harder to see. I came to love you in time, but I feared the dark side as well. I still do. You have tremendous potential, potential for joy or hate, light or dark, life or death. But in the end, you choose. What a gift, what a joy to witness.

The endless, agonizing recycling of what might have been, soon followed by a litany of rationalizations and self-deceptions as you struggle to reconcile the void between the person you want to be and the person you fear you are.

Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.

The teenage years are years of great chaos and confusion in your lives, but also a time of seeking a deeper meaning.

Adolescence is when the very worst and best impulses in the human soul struggle against each other for possession.

The bigger confrontation is the one an individual has with itself.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

Over and over again, I'm trying to express or communicate these big and small struggles to the world, and really to myself.

I was not fighting myself at all as I used to.

There was a period when I had a hard time reconciling all the different parts of me in a way that I thought would make sense to others.

Somewhere deep down there's a decent man in me, he just can't be found.

Some of the greatest battles will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul.

Well, the years from 10 to 20, when your body, mind and everything is like changing every five minutes, can be pretty torturing. And most of the interesting characters, I think, are somewhat tortured or torturous. I'm 20 now, so I'm only just an adult.

Anybody can get lost in themselves.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

There are parts of me that I keep secret even from myself. I have demons and I'd love to be able to healthily look at the demons and still be a wonderful actor and not feel I need them to create.

Well, I believe that life is very complicated. And in a way, the only way you can show life in a truthful way is to show how complicated it is as an individual, but also your relation between a complicated life and the complications you have inside you.

To me, any character that is conflicted inside as well as outside of themselves is always a better role to play.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

In the early 2000s, I was going through a lot. I didn't have my head screwed on right. Where I was at as a man, I was still growing up.

I am a spy in the house of me. I report back from the front lines of the battle that is me. I am somewhat nonplused by the event that is my life.

A man's conflicts represent what he 'really' is.