A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then-the glory-so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished.
John SteinbeckI have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?
John SteinbeckI believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caughtโin their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity tooโin a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done wellโor ill?
John SteinbeckWhen I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. I fear the disease is incurable.
John Steinbeck