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Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
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Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles oh, damn their measured merriment.
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He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all.
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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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Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.
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Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
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People will buy anything that is 'one to a customer.'
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Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.
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The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century.
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The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, "The trouble with this country is..."
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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.
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There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.
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What is love? It is the morning and the evening star.
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Whatever poet, orator or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.
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When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read.

Biography

Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885–January 10, 1951) was an American novelist and playwright. In 1930 he became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Born Harry Sinclair Lewis in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, he began reading books at a young age and kept a diary. A dreamer, at age 13 he unsuccessfully ran away from home, wanting to become a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War. At first, he produced romantic poetry, then romantic stories about knights and fair ladies. By 1921 he had six novels published.

Lewis was innovative for giving strong characterization to modern working women and his concern with race. Restless, he traveled a lot and in the 1920s he would spend time with other great artists in the Montparnasse Quarter in Paris, France where he would be photographed by Man Ray.

Alcohol would play a dominant role in his life and he died of the effects of advanced alcoholism in Rome, Italy.

He created the fictional cities of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota and Zenith, Winnemac.

Timeline

* 1885 Born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota to Dr. Edwin J. Lewis and Emma Kermott Lewis.
* 1891 Mother dies. Father marries Isabel Warner in 1892.
* 1902 Attends Oberlin in Ohio.
* 1903-1906 Attends Yale University, serves as editor of Literary Magazine, works on cattleboats during two summers.
* 1906 Spends month doing odd jobs at Upton Sinclair's Helicon Hall (utopian community).
* 1906-1908 Works at temporary jobs, graduates Yale in 1908.
* 1908-1915 Travels U.S., works in New York publishing houses.
* 1912 Hike and the Aeroplane published (first book, a boy's adventure story).
* 1914 Marries Grace Hegger. Our Mr.Wrenn published.
* 1917 The Job and The Innocents published. Son, Wells, born.
* 1919 Free Air published.
* 1920 Main Street published, first major commercial success.
* 1922 Babbitt.
* 1925 Arrowsmith.
* 1926 Mantrap. Awarded Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith but refuses it. Father dies.
* 1927 Elmer Gantry.
* 1928 The Man Who Knew Coolidge. Divorces Grace Hegger, marries journalist Dorothy Thompson.
* 1929 Dodsworth.
* 1930 Son Michael born. Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature on November 5 (first American to be so honored).
* 1933 Ann Vickers
* 1934 Work of Art. Assists Sidney Howard in adapting Dodsworth to the stage.
* 1935 It Can't Happen Here and Selected Stories.
* 1936-1942 Writes several plays and acts in a few of them.
* 1938 The Prodigal Parents.
* 1940 Bethel Merriday. Teaches briefly at University of Wisconsin.
* 1942 Divorces Dorothy Thompson.
* 1943 Gideon Planish.
* 1944 Lt. Wells Lewis killed by sniper in Piedmont Valley, France (near Alsace-Lorraine) during WW II.
* 1945 Cass Timberlane.
* 1947 Kingsblood Royal.
* 1949 The God Seeker.
* 1951 Dies in Rome of heart disease. He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, MN. World So Wide published posthumously.

...(more on Wikipedia)

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