Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

Three hours of writing require twenty hours of preparation. Luckily I have learned to dream about the work, which saves me some working time.

I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

A creative person has to be alive. He can't borrow from things he's done in the past. He can't let his method choose his subjects or his characters. They can't be warped to fit his style.

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.