John Steinbeck Quotes
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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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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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A little hope, even hopeless hope, never hurt anybody.
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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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Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.
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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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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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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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Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
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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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'It is so easy a thing to give-only great men have the courage and courtesy and, yes, the generosity to receive.'
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A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.
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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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Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.
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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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Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
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I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
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… we've got so many laws you can't breathe without breaking something.
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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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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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To be alive at all is to have scars.
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A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.
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Maybe not having time to think is not having the wish to think.