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Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.

Sinclair Lewis

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Sinclair Lewis
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Writer
Sauk Centre
Minnesota
Harry Sinclair Lewis
Clear
American
Like
Professors
Pure
Cold
Dead
Education
Literature

More quotes by Sinclair Lewis

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There 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.
Sinclair Lewis
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When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag.
Sinclair Lewis
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I must say I'm not very fond of oratory that's so full of energy it hasn't any room for facts.
Sinclair Lewis
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You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.
Sinclair Lewis
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NOW is a fact that cannot be dodged.
Sinclair Lewis
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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.
Sinclair Lewis
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We'd get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all.
Sinclair Lewis
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Unhappy women are given to protecting their sensitiveness by cynical gossip, by whining, by high-church and new-thought religions, or by a fog of vagueness.
Sinclair Lewis
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Cure the evils of Democracy by the evils of Fascism! Funny therapeutics! I've heard of their curing syphilis by giving the patient malaria, but I've never heard of their curing malaria by giving the patient syphilis.
Sinclair Lewis
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Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.
Sinclair Lewis
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What are these unheard of sins you condemn so much - and like so well?
Sinclair Lewis
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There was much conversation, most of which sounded like the rest of it.
Sinclair Lewis
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Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes-it's still just work.
Sinclair Lewis
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It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.
Sinclair Lewis
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Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.
Sinclair Lewis
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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.
Sinclair Lewis
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Indians, of course, have no theology, and indeed no word for the system of credulity in which the white priests arrange for God, who must be entirely bewildered by it, a series of excuses for his failures.
Sinclair Lewis
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Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth.
Sinclair Lewis
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You, Said Dr. Yavitch, are a middle-road liberal, and you haven't the slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactly what I want -- and what I want now is a drink.
Sinclair Lewis
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Funny how the world always praises its opera-singers so much and pays 'em so well and then starves its shoemakers, and yet it needs good shoes so much more than it needs opera--or war or fiction.
Sinclair Lewis