John Steinbeck Quotes
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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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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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Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.
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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.
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His ear heard more than is said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.
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We could live offa the fatta the lan’.
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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.
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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.
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You watch your place, nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy, it ain't even funny.
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A man is a lonely thing.
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'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.'
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'It has always seemed strange to me,' said Doc. 'The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success.'
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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.
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I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.
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'What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.'
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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.
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No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.
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I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.
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Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.
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Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.
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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.
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I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?
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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.
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In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.