But you can't start. Only a baby can start. You and me - why, we're all that's been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that's us. This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can't start again.

How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)

Humanity has been passing through a gray and desolate time of confusion.

You stay out here a little while, an' if you smell any roses, you come let me smell, too.

Oh, the strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!

Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.

Some men ease themselves like setting hens into the nest of death.