John Steinbeck Quotes
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It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.
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The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
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You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.
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I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
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When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you got two new people. Maybe that means - hell, it's complicated.
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I guess this is why I hate governments. It is always the rule, the fine print, carried out by the fine print men. There's nothing to fight, no wall to hammer with frustrated fists.
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My dreams are the problems of the day stepped up to absurdity, a little like men dancing, wearing the horns and masks of animals.
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Sometimes it's great fun to be silly, like children playing statues and dying of laughter. And sometimes being silly breaks the even pace and lets you get a new start.
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Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word. And there’s an opening convey of generalities. A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.
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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.
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With humanity's long proud history of standing firm against natural enemies, sometimes in the face of almost certain defeat and extinction, we would be cowardly and stupid to leave the field on the eve of our greatest potential victory.
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A question is a trap, and an answer your foot in it.
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We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say - and to feel - 'Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.'
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It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.
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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.
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For the first time I am working on a book that is not limited and that will take every bit of experience and thought and feeling that I have.
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All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.
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It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.
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Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.
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It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
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The misery stayed, not thought about but aching away, and sometimes I would have to ask myself, Why do I ache? Men can get used to anything, but it takes time.
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How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?
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For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.
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Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.