John Anderson

“I went to the library. I looked at the magazines, at the pictures in them. One day I went to the bookshelves, and pulled out a book. It was Winesburg, Ohio.. I sat at a long mahogany table and began to read. All at once my world turned over. The sky fell in. The book held me. The tears came. My heart beat fast. I read until my eyes burned. I took the book home. I read another Anderson. I read and I read, and I was heartsick and lonely and in love with a book, many books, until it came naturally, and I sat there with a pencil and a long tablet, and tried to write, until I felt I could not go on because the words would not come as they did in Anderson, they only came like drops of blood from my heart.””

“Words accumulate. And once they're free there's no taking them back.You can do an awful lot of damage with a handful of words. Destroy a friendship. End a marriage. Start a war. Some words can break you to pieces.But that's not all. Words can be beautiful. they can make you feel things you've never felt before. Gather enough of them and they can stick those same pieces back together, provided they're the right words, said at the right time. But that takes more courage than you'd think.””

“I don't think there's too much normal out there anymore. Though there's still plenty of average to go around.””