John Steinbeck Quotes
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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.
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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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Time is the only critic without ambition.
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I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.
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One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter: 'Beware. You will never get out of this world alive.'
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Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
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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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He brought his malformed wisdom, his pool-hall, locker-room, joke-book wisdom to the front.
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Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.
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Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.
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'When you argue with a child,' she said warmly, 'you give a good argument and the child says yah, yah! You understand him and he doesn't listen, so the child wins.'
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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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Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
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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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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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'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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A little hope, even hopeless hope, never hurt anybody.
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To be alive at all is to have scars.
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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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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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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.
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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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Strength and success- they are above morality, above criticism. It seems then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it.
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A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.