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I never learned to say shit before a lady. I don't believe in progress in quite the way you seem to. You believe in it more than Grandmother did. As for those purely cultural patterns of convention you think I ought to escape from, they happen to add up to civilization, and I'd rather be civilized than tribal or uncouth.

I never learned to say shit before a lady. I don't believe in progress in quite the way you seem to. You believe in it more than Grandmother did. As for those purely cultural patterns of convention you think I ought to escape from, they happen to add up to civilization, and I'd rather be civilized than tribal or uncouth.

Approximate author period: c. 1951 AD · modern

Meaning not yet available

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Wallace Stegner
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1951 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1909 to 1993; Wikidata Q203460, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q203460 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Contributor-provided quotation collection

Supplied reference C; CSV row 242216; supplied attribution, independently unverified

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.