Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts.
John SteinbeckHard-covered books break up friendships. You loan a hard covered book to a friend and when he doesnโt return it you get mad at him. It makes you mean and petty. But twenty-five cent books are different.
John SteinbeckJust like heaven. Everโbody wants a little piece of lanโ. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. Itโs just in their head. Theyโre all the time talkinโ about it, but itโs jusโ in their head.
John SteinbeckThe story [Henny-Penny] has the best opening in all literature-"The sky is falling," cried Henny-Penny, "and a piece of it fell on my tail.
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 โ to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.
John Steinbeck