I wrote The Grapes of Wrath in one hundred days, but many years of preparation preceded it.
John SteinbeckYou know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.
John SteinbeckWhen you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book — to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.
John SteinbeckIt 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.
John Steinbeck