I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton woool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it's such a sweet trap.

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.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

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

Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.