Theodore Dreiser — American Novelist born on August 27, 1871, died on December 28, 1945

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of choice and agency. Dreiser's best known novels include Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy. In 1930 he was nominated to the Nobel Prize in Literature... (wikipedia)

Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.
Let no one underestimate the need of pity. We live in a stony universe whose hard, brilliant forces rage fiercely.
Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.
Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
Assure a man that he has a soul and then frighten him with old wives' tales as to what is to become of him afterward, and you have hooked a fish, a mental slave.