I have for myself no conceivable complaint to make, and yet for American literature in general, and its standing in a country where industrialism and finance and science flourish and the only arts that are vital and respected are architecture and the film, I have a considerable complaint.
SINCLAIR LEWISThere are dozens of young poets and fictioneers most of them a little insane in the tradition of James Joyce, who, however insane they may be, have refused to be genteel and traditional and dull.
More Sinclair Lewis Quotes
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Fortune has dealt with me rather too well. I have known little struggle, not much poverty, many generosities.
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God has never done much but creep around and try to catch us disobeying it.
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There is no greater compliment to the Jews than the fact that the degree of their unpopularity is always the scientific measure of the cruelty and silliness of the regime under which they live.
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If travel were so inspiring and informing a business … then the wisest men in the world would be deck hands on tramp steamers.
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Why is it that traveling Americans are always so dreadful?
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Don’t be a writer. Writing is an escape from something. You be a scientist.
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We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just wiser than you.’ For ten thousand years they’ve said that. We want our Utopia now — and we’re going to try our hands at it.
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Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.
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He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons.
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It is the irritation of getting tickets, packing, finding trains, lying in bouncing berths, washing without water, digging out passports, and fighting through customs.
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You,” Said Dr. Yavitch, “are a middle-road liberal, and you haven’t the slightest idea what you want.
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Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one’s business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse.
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Since dictating the Bible, and hiring a perfect race of ministers to explain it,
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Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure–wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.
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In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.
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The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.
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Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles, damn the men that run the shops, oh, damn their measured merriment.
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She was snatched back from a dream of far countries, and found herself on Main Street.
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Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
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What is Love? Listen! It is the rainbow that stands out, in all its glorious many-colored hues.
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Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
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It is impossible to discourage the real writers – they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write.
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The game (baseball)was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called “patriotism” and “love of sport.”
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Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country.
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That nation is proudest and noblest and most exalted which has the greatest number of really great men.
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The most important part of living is not the living but the pondering upon it.
SINCLAIR LEWIS