John Steinbeck Quotes

The clouds appeared and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore.

You're buying years of work, toil in the sun; you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.

There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen.

I am writing this from what we Americans call Yurrp. In Yurrp writers are taken as seriously as Lana Turner's legs are in America - a ridiculous situation.

Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.

An ocean without unnamed monsters would be like sleep without dreams.

I'll want to hear,' Samuel said. 'I eat stories like grapes.

Within that frame he went a long way and burned a deep scar.

He can kill anything for need but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure.

Intention, good or bad, is not enough.

I nearly always write — just as I nearly always breathe.

It is astounding to find that the belly of every black and evil thing is as white as snow. And it is saddening to discover how the concealed parts of angels are leporous.

My whole work drive has been aimed at making people understand each other. . .

In nature two things do not occur-the wheel and good taste.

Ever'body's askin' that. "What we comin' to?" Seems to me we don't never come to nothin'. Always on the way.

Sometimes when she was alone, and she knew she was alone, she permitted her mind to play in a garden, and she smiled.

...men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everything lovable about them.

It don't cost money to ask.

I wish to God I knew as much about writing as I did when I was 19. I was absolutely certain about most things then. Also, I suspect, more accurate.

Best thing is to get the words down every day. And it is time to start now.

New York is a wonderful city... It is going to be the capital of the world.

The land is so much more than its analysis.

It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be loved without satiety.

Just set one day's work in front of the last day's work. That's the way it comes out. And that's the only way it does.

I carry a gun cause a cop is too heavy.

I dislike helplessness in other people and in myself, and this is by far my greatest fear of illness.

I do want to make it very convincing. And the best way to do that is to put most of it in dialogue.

Give me a used Bible and I will, I think, be able to tell you about a man by the places that are edged with the dirt of seeking fingers.

I think there must have been some other girl printed somewhere in his heart, for he was a man of love and his wife was not a woman to show her feelings.

It is better to sit in appreciative contemplation of a world in which beauty is eternally supported on a foundation of ugliness: cut out the support, and beauty will sink from sight.

You can't slice up morals.

I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a satisfaction like that which follows good and shared love.

In business and in politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind-but he must get there first.

A fallow field is a sin.

I think today if we forbade our illiterate children to touch the wonderful things of our literature, perhaps they might steal them and find secret joy.

Luck, you see, brings bitter friends.

The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.

No one knows my ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time.

Well, I git enough sorrow. I like to git away from it.

The candle aimed its spark of light at heaven, like an artist who consumes himself to become divine.

Strength and success; they are above morality, above criticism. It seems then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it.

Failure is a state of mind. It's like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.

It requires self-esteem to receive-not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.

War ... a reversal of the rules where a man is permitted to kill all the humans he can.

I think I love you, Cal." -Abra I'm not good." -Cal Because you're not good." -Abra

I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere.

Some people there are who, being grown; forget the horrible task of learning to read. It is perhaps the greatest single effort that the human undertakes, and he must do it as a child.

One of the laws of paleontology is that an animal which must protect itself with thick armour is degenerate. It is usually a sign that the species is on the road to extinction.

You got to live before you can afford to die.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another-but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.