John Steinbeck Quotes

A creative person has to be alive. He can't borrow from things he's done in the past. He can't let his method choose his subjects or his characters. They can't be warped to fit his style.

And you know what it is? San Francisco a golden handcuff with the key thrown away.

But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.

The quality of owning freezes you forever in "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we.

I don’t mind getting smacked on the chin. I just don’t want to get nibbled to death. There’s a difference.

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page a day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.

You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff

Socialism never took root in America.

A question is a trap and an answer is your foot in it.

Some men are friends with the whole world in their hearts, and there are others that hate themselves and spread their hatred around like butter on hot bread.

There's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.

You know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.

And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.

And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.

The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you.

Out of all this struggle a good thing is going to grow. That makes it worthwhile.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain.

I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.

Once you have lived in New York and made it your home, no place else is good enough

Can you honestly love a dishonest thing?

Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones.

Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.

You can boast about anything if it's all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter, "Beware. You will never get out of this world alive."

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?

I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

Everyone I have ever known very well has been concerned that I would eventually starve. Probably I shall. It isn't important enough to me to be an obsession.

I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one.

Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life - so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we do.

A good writer always works at the impossible.There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights.

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.

People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.

A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?

Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.

The camera need not be a cold mechanical device. Like the pen, it is as good as the man who uses it. It can be the extension of mind and heart.

They's times when how you feel got to be kep' to yourself.

Men really do need sea-monsters in their personal oceans

I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.

No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.

Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world.

An answer is invariably the parent of a whole family of new questions.

If we could learn even a little to like ourselves, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.

Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.

Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

I know now why confusion in government is not only tolerated but encouraged. I have learned. A confused people can make no clear demands.