John Steinbeck Quotes
'When you argue with a child,' she said warmly, 'you give a good argument and the child says yah, yah! You understand him and he doesn't listen, so the child wins.'
John Steinbeck
Quotes to Explore
The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
John Steinbeck
'I'm sorry,' Ethan said. 'You have taught me something - maybe three things, rabbit footling mine. Three things will never be believed - the true, the probable, and the logical. I know now where to get the money to start my fortune.'
John Steinbeck
A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.
John Steinbeck
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
John Steinbeck
This monster of a land, this mightiest of nations, this spawn of the future, turns out to be the macrocosm of microcosm me.
John Steinbeck
When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.
John Steinbeck
They come, an' they quit an' go on; an' every damn one of 'em's got a little piece of land in his head. An' never a God damn one of 'em ever gets it. Just like heaven. Ever'body wants a little piece of lan'. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It's just in their head.
John Steinbeck
If lowborn men could stand up to those born to rule, religion, government, the whole world would fall to pieces...Merlin replies...So it would; so it will ... then the pieces will be put together again by such as destroyed it.
John Steinbeck
It is odd how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place - everyone must have one, although I have never heard of a man tell of it.
John Steinbeck
I am a dog.
John Steinbeck
Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is - and a woman too, I guess.
John Steinbeck
For every man in the world functions to the best of his ability, and no one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it.
John Steinbeck
