More absurdity in myself, endless absurdities. My own childishness sometimes amused me. Would it amuse others? Were others like myself, hopelessly ch… - Sherwood Anderson

At his desk the writer worked for an hour. In the end he wrote a book which he called “The Book of the Grotesque”. It was never published, but I saw it once and it made an indelible impression on my mind. The book had one central thought that is very strange and has always remained with me. By remembering it I have been able to understand many people and things that I was never able to understand before. The thought was involved but a simple statement of it would be something like this:

That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful.

The old man had listed hundreds of the truths in his book. I will not try to tell you of all of them. There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful.

And then the people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them.

It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.

You can see for yourself how the old man, who had spent all of his life writing and was filled with words, would write hundreds of pages concerning this matter. The subject would become so big in his mind that he himself would be in danger of becoming a grotesque. He didn’t, I suppose, for the same reason that he never published the book. It was the young thing inside him that saved the old man.

Concerning the old carpenter who fixed the b

There is no use my not facing everything frankly. By facing everything frankly one gets everything quite cleared up.

"Onun karısıyım ve onun karısı olarak kalacağım" diye fısıldıyordu ve kendi kendine geçindirmeye yönelik tüm istekliliğine rağmen gittikçe yaygınlaşan, kadınların kendi kendine sahip olma ve kendi çıkarlarına gözetmeye yönelik modern fikirleri bir türlü anlayamıyordu.