A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.
John SteinbeckSo many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.
John SteinbeckFor every man in the world functions to the best of his ability, and no one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it.
John SteinbeckI suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.
John Steinbeck