John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley: In Search Of America Quotes

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments

We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.

When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.

Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans

In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.

Perhaps my greatest wisdom is the knowledge that I do not know.

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think youcontrol it.

You don't even know where I'm going.""I don't care. I'd like to go anywhere.

What I am mourning is perhaps not worth saving, but I regret its loss nevertheless.

...people don’t take trips—trips take people.

Curious how a place unvisited can take such hold on the mind so that the very name sets up a ringing.

And now submarines are armed with mass murder, our silly, only way of deterring mass murder.

The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if no other way, we can see the wild an reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index.

I don't ever drink alone. It's not much fun. And I don't think I will until I am an alcoholic.