Quotes from John Dos Passos

The rich were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer, small farmers were being squeezed out, workingmen were working twelve hours a day for a bare living; profits were for the rich, the law was for the rich, the cops were for the rich;

The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there's nowhere else. It's the top of the world.

One phrase stuck in Fainy's mind, and he repeated it to himself after he had gone to bed that night: It is time for all honest men to band together to resist the ravages of greedy privilege.

While there is a lower class I am of it, while there is a criminal class I am of it, while there is a soul in prison I am not free.

But you're out of another world old kid … You ought to live on top of the Woolworth Building in an apartment made of cutglass and cherry blossoms.

With people who are young and aren't scared you can do lots.

They have clubbed us off the streets they are stronger they are rich they hire and fire the politicians the newspapereditors the old judges the small men with reputations the collegepresidents the wardheelers (listen businessmen collegepresidents judges America will not forget her betrayers) they hire the men with guns the uniforms the policecars the patrolwagons all right you have won you will kill the brave men our friends tonight (author's punctuation)

all right we are two nations

How do I get to Broadway?...I want to get to the center of things.

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

Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs.

If there are no permanent standards, there is no criticism possible.

The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there's nowhere else. It's the top of the world. All we can do is go round and round in a squirrel cage.

I read and keep silent. I am one of the silent watchers. I know that every sentence, every word, every picayune punctuation that appears in the public press is perused and revised and deleted in the interests of advertisers and bondholders. The fountain of national life is poisoned at the source.

Why, lies are like a sticky juice overspreading the world, a living, growing flypaper to catch and gum the wings of every human soul. . . And the little helpless buzzings of honest, liberal, kindly people, aren't they like the thin little noise flies make when they're caught?

In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable.

There was Babylon and Nineveh; they were built of brick. Athens was gold marble columns. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn… Steel, glass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscraper. Crammed on the narrow island the millionwindowed buildings will just glittering, pyramid on pyramid like the white cloudhead above a thunderstorm.

So many Americans felt that their neighbor had no right to know more than they did.

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

I do a lot of revising. Certain chapters six or seven times. Occasionally you can hit it right the first time. More often, you don't.

Mealtime's the only time I get to devote to the things of the spirit.

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

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.

This ain't a war... It's a goddam whorehouse.