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.
Sinclair LewisWriters kid themselves-about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes-it is just work.
Sinclair LewisIn 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 LewisBeing a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue.
Sinclair LewisMen die, but the plutocracy is immortal; and it is necessary that fresh generations should be trained to its service.
Sinclair LewisMy objection to the church isn't that the preachers are cruel, hypocritical, actually wicked, though some of them are that, too - think of how many are arrested for selling fake stock, for seducing 14-year-old girls in orphanages under their care, for arson, for murder. An it isn't so much that the church is in bondage to Big Business and doctrines as laid down by millionaires - though a lot of churches are that, too. My chief objection is that 99% of sermons and Sunday School teachings are so agonizingly dull.
Sinclair Lewis