If there is anything worse than the aching tedium of staring out of car windows, it is the irritation of getting tickets, packing, finding trains, lying in bouncing berths, washing without water, digging out passports, and fighting through customs. To live in Carlsbad is seemly and to loaf at San Remo healing to the soul, but to get from Carlsbad to San Remo is of the devil.
Sinclair LewisIt has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is better off than others.
Sinclair LewisOn the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy has given the ordinary worker more dignity than he ever had.
Sinclair LewisIs it possible that nobody has ever known that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won't be for another thousand years?
Sinclair LewisIntellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.
Sinclair LewisEvery 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 LewisParis is one of the largest, and certainly it is the pleasantest, of modern American cities.
Sinclair LewisMost 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 LewisThe Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.
Sinclair LewisIn 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.
Sinclair LewisThe trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, "The trouble with this country is...."
Sinclair LewisExcept for half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which is so easy to come by. To be 'intellectual' or 'artistic' or, in their own word, to be 'highbrow,' is to be priggish and of dubious virtue.
Sinclair LewisShe was snatched back from a dream of far countries, and found herself on Main Street.
Sinclair LewisWhatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.
Sinclair LewisIt might be the doing of Satan, in whom Aaron anxiously believed with all of his being except, perhaps, his mind.
Sinclair LewisUpon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which 'did a fellow good-- kept him in touch with Higher Things.
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 Lewis