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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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Sinclair Lewis
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Harry Sinclair Lewis
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What are these unheard of sins you condemn so much - and like so well?
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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.
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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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Since dictating the Bible, and hiring a perfect race of ministers to explain it, God has never done much but creep around and try to catch us disobeying it.
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Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag.
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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.
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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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Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.
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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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If travel were so inspiring and informing a business ... then the wisest men in the world would be deck hands on tramp steamers.
Sinclair Lewis
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Life is hard and astonishingly complicated.... No one great reform will make it easy. Most of us who work -- or want to work -- will always have trouble or discontent. So we must learn to be calm, and train all our faculties, and make others happy.
Sinclair Lewis
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What is Love? Listen! It is the rainbow that stands out, in all its glorious many-colored hues, illuminating and making glad again the dark clouds of life. It is the morning and the evening star, that in glad refulgence, there on the awed horizon, call Nature's hearts to an uplifted rejoicing in God's marvelous firmament!
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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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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His name was George F. Babbitt, and . . . he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.
Sinclair Lewis
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He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons.
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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Winter is not a season in the North Middlewest it is an industry.
Sinclair Lewis
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The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he was aware of devastating desires—to rush places in fast motors, to kiss girls, to sing, to be witty. ... He perceived that he had gifts of profligacy which had been neglected. —chapter 8
Sinclair Lewis