A satirist is a man whose flesh creeps so at the ugly and the savage and the incongruous aspects of society that he has to express them as brutally and nakedly as possible in order to get relief.

About John Dos Passos

John Roderigo Dos Passoswas an American novelist, most notable for his U.S.A. trilogy.
Born in Chicago, Dos Passos graduated from Harvard College in 1916.

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More quotes from John Dos Passos

If I were sufficiently romantic I suppose I’d have killed myself long ago just to make people talk about me. I haven’t even got the conviction to make a successful drunkard.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

Display advertising and the movies, though they may dull the wits, certainly stimulate the eyes.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

Women is fine once you got em pinned down, boss, but when they ain’t pinned down they’re hell.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

The mind cannot support moral chaos for long. Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

We work to eat to get the strength to work to eat to get the strength to work to eat to get the strength to work to eat to get the strength to work.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

A satirist is a man whose flesh creeps so at the ugly and the savage and the incongruous aspects of society that he has to express them as brutally and nakedly as possible in order to get relief.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

What is the use being a big man if you are wrong?

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

The only way to find out anything about what kinds of lives people led in any given period is to tunnel into their records and to let them speak for themselves.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

Breaking with old friends is one of the most painful of the changes in all that piling up of a multitude of small distasteful changes that constitutes growing older.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

U.S.A. is the speech of the people.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

Sex is a slotmachine.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

A man’s got to work for more than himself and his kids to feel right.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

Accidents will happen in the best regulated families.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

It’s almost worth having been in the army for the joy your freedom gives you.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

Love is cheap. You can buy it anywhere. Lives are cheap. It’s money that’s dear. You have to work days and sit up nights thinking how to make money.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

The creation of a world view is the work of a generation rather than of an individual, but we each of us, for better or for worse, add our brick to the edifice.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)

People don’t choose their careers; they are engulfed by them.

John Dos Passos

American novelist (1896-1970)