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.

Fella in business got to lie an' cheat, but he calls it somepin else. That's what's important. You go steal that tire an' you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business.

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.

I wrote The Grapes of Wrath in one hundred days, but many years of preparation preceded it.

I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments

How 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?

Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels. They gathered mountains and valleys, rivers and whole horizons, the way a man might now gain tittle to building lots.