"What life means to me is to put the content of Shelley into the form of Zola. The proletarian writer is a writer with a purpose; he thinks no more of "art for art's sake" than a man on a sinking ship thinks of painting a beautiful picture in the cabin; he thinks of getting ashore — and then there will be time enough for art."
- Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)

Source: Upton Sinclair in Cosmopolitan, 1906, quoted in SWADOS, Harvey. 1962. Radical's America. Little, Brown and Company. Available online from URL http://www.archive.org/stream/radicalsamericaa010992mbp/radicalsamericaa010992mbp_djvu.txt. [Downloaded 2009-09-27]