A wife is like a children's movie; always under-appreciated and without either, life would be incomplete.

[Cannery Row's] inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,' by which he meant everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing.

Nobody changes. Nobody gets hurt.

The clouds appeared and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore.

The quality of owning freezes you forever in "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we.

There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.

Out of all this struggle a good thing is going to grow. That makes it worthwhile.