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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.
John Steinbeck -
Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.
John Steinbeck
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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.
John Steinbeck -
You watch your place, nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy, it ain't even funny.
John Steinbeck -
Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.
John Steinbeck -
We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.
John Steinbeck -
A man is a lonely thing.
John Steinbeck -
Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.
John Steinbeck
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Well, God knows he don't need any brains to buck barley bags. But don't you try to put nothing over, Milton. I got my eye on you.
John Steinbeck -
'I do understand. I understand that you are offered a loveliness and you vomit on it, that you have the gift of love given you such as few men have ever known and you throw on it the acid of your pride, your ugly twisted sense of importance.'
John Steinbeck -
I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.
John Steinbeck -
He brought his malformed wisdom, his pool-hall, locker-room, joke-book wisdom to the front.
John Steinbeck -
Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.
John Steinbeck -
So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda.
John Steinbeck
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The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage.
John Steinbeck -
Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
John Steinbeck -
One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter: 'Beware. You will never get out of this world alive.'
John Steinbeck -
Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
John Steinbeck -
In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
John Steinbeck -
A little hope, even hopeless hope, never hurt anybody.
John Steinbeck
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Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.
John Steinbeck -
The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California.
John Steinbeck -
Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
John Steinbeck -
Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Opening sentence.
John Steinbeck