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Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.

Sinclair Lewis

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Sinclair Lewis
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Writer
Sauk Centre
Minnesota
Harry Sinclair Lewis
Upon
Become
Writing
Sterile
Every
Obedient
Compulsion
Polite
Writers
Safe

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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.
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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.
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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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People will buy anything that is one to a customer.
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Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.
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His name was George F. Babbitt, and . . . he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.
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She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them.
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In everything was the spirit of children's play - not the rule-ridden, time-killing play of adults that is a preparation for death, but the busy and credulous play of children that is a preparation for life.
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Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.
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Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.
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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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Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag.
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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There are so many people in the world who are eager to do for you things that you do not wish done, provided only that you will do for them things that you don't wish to do.
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It isn't what you earn but how spend it that fixes your class.
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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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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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
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Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
Sinclair Lewis