There's an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort.

...no gift will ever buy back a man's love when you have removed his self-love.

Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby those fruits may be eaten.

I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer -- and what trees and seasons smelled like -- how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.

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