John Steinbeck Quotes
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In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
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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.
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Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.
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If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick.
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A little hope, even hopeless hope, never hurt anybody.
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Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
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I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.
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We could live offa the fatta the lan’.
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'Ellen, only last night, asked, 'Daddy, when will we be rich?' But I did not say to her what I know: 'We will be rich soon, and you who handle poverty badly will handle riches equally badly.' And that is true. In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.'
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If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.
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Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
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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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… we've got so many laws you can't breathe without breaking something.
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Does anyone ever know even the outer fringe of another? What are you like in there? Mary - do you hear? Who are you in there?
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Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.
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I have never even wondered about the comparative standing of writers. I don't understand that. Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product is turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. Consequently criticism doesn't mean anything to me. As a disciplinary matter, it is too late.
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Maybe not having time to think is not having the wish to think.
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A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.
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It is strange 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 never heard a man tell of it.
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I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love.
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They successfully combined piracy and puritanism, which aren't so unlike when you come right down to it. Both had a strong dislike for opposition and both had a roving eye for other people's property.
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These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.
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To be alive at all is to have scars.
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It is a nice thing to be working and believing in my work again. I hope I can keep the drive. I only feel whole and well when it is this way.