Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches, nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair.
John SteinbeckI have starved and it isn't nearly as bad as is generally supposed. Four days and a half was my longest stretch. Maybe there are pains that come later. Personally I think terror is the painful part of starvation.
John SteinbeckHow can the poem and the stink and the grating noise - the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream - be set down alive?
John SteinbeckIt is the hour of pearl—the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.
John SteinbeckWe have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.
John Steinbeck