Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world.

He never forgot anything but he never bothered to arrange his memories. -Hazel, Cannery Row

The craft of writing is the art of penetrating other minds with the figures that are in your own mind.

My wife, my Mary, goes to her sleep the way you would close the door of a closet. So many times I have watched her with envy. Her lovely body squirms a moment as though she fitted herself into a cocoon. She sighs once and at the end of it her eyes close and her lips, untroubled, fall into that wise and remote smile of the Ancient Greek gods. She smiles all night in her sleep, her breath purrs in her throat, not a snore, a kitten's purr... She loves to sleep and sleep welcomes her.

The trash and litter of nature disappears into the ground with the passing of each year, but man's litter has more permanence.

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)

You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.