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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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Sinclair Lewis
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Writer
Sauk Centre
Minnesota
Harry Sinclair Lewis
Tradition
Dozens
However
Refused
Poet
James
Young
Dozen
Littles
Poets
May
Dull
Little
Insane
Genteel
Traditional
Joyce

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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.
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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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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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Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
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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
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Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.
Sinclair Lewis
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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.
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.
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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.
Sinclair Lewis
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There was much conversation, most of which sounded like the rest of it.
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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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It isn't what you earn but how spend it that fixes your class.
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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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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Sleep with me sleep with my dogs-
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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Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.
Sinclair Lewis
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That nation is proudest and noblest and most exalted which has the greatest number of really great men.
Sinclair Lewis
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To a true-blue professor of literature in an American university, literature is not something that a plain human being, living today, painfully sits down to produce. No it is something dead.
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