As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.
John SteinbeckOh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I know beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid.
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 SteinbeckWhen I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.
John SteinbeckIt would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.
John SteinbeckI believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.... The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?
John SteinbeckThe design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.
John SteinbeckWe gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.
John SteinbeckA book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive.
John SteinbeckBut the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.
John SteinbeckI remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer -- and what trees and seasons smelled like -- how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.
John SteinbeckThe first grave. Now we're getting someplace. Houses and children and graves, that's home, Tom. Those are the things that hold a man down.
John SteinbeckPictures... are also opinions... [they] set down what the camera operator sees and he sees what he wants to see and what he loves and hates and pities and is proud of.
John SteinbeckIt is the nature of a person as he/she grows older to protest against change, particularly changes for the better.
John SteinbeckSomewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.
John SteinbeckThe camera is one of the most frightening of modern weapons, particularly to people who have been in warfare, who have been bombed and shelled for at the back of a bombing run is invariably a photograph. In the back of ruined towns, and cities, and factories, there is aerial mapping, or spy mapping, usually with a camera. Therefore the camera is a feared instrument, and a man with a camera is suspected and watched wherever he goes... In the minds of most people today the camera is the forerunner of destruction, and it is suspected, and rightly so.
John SteinbeckDon't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' I thought an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.
John SteinbeckThere's an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort.
John SteinbeckAs with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.
John SteinbeckA man with a beard was always a little suspect anyway. You couldn't say you wore a beard because you liked a beard. People didn't like you for telling the truth. You had to say you had a scar so you couldn't shave.
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 SteinbeckBut I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.
John SteinbeckBut you must give him some sign, some sign that you love him... or he'll never be a man. All his life he'll feel guilty and alone unless you release him.
John SteinbeckThe people in flight from the terror behind-strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.
John SteinbeckIt sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another-but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.
John SteinbeckI dislike helplessness in other people and in myself, and this is by far my greatest fear of illness.
John SteinbeckAnd, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.
John SteinbeckI 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.
John SteinbeckNo man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.
John SteinbeckFree men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.
John SteinbeckIt is not enough to say that we cannot know or judge because all the information is not in. The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child's world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions. So we draw worlds and fit them like tracings against the world about us, and crumple them when we find they do not fit and draw new ones.
John SteinbeckThat man who is more then his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis.
John SteinbeckRich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.
John Steinbeck