John Steinbeck Quotes

Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.

Yes, you should talk," he said. "Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth.

Intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over.

The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or the breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.

All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight.

Then it is better, sir, to love whom one cannot have?" "Probably better," Lancelot said. "Certainly safer.

So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda.

One pays for everything, the trick is not to pay too much of anything for anything.

Why don't you go on west to California? There's work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange. Why, there's always some kind of crop to work in. Why don't you go there?

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

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

My whole work drive has been aimed at making people understand each other. . .

[He] fell right into the oldest conviction in the world-- that the girl you are in love with can't possibly be anything but true and honest.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man.

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. Change may be announced by a small ache, so that you think you're catching cold. Or you may feel a faint disgust for something you loved yesterday. It may even take the form of a hunger that peanuts won't satisfy. Isn't overeating said to be one of the strongest symptoms of discontent. And isn't discontent the lever of change?

..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.

I think today if we forbade our illiterate children to touch the wonderful things of our literature, perhaps they might steal them and find secret joy.

A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.

The American girl makes a servant of her husband and then finds him contemptible for being a servant

New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it - once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.

One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter, "Beware. You will never get out of this world alive."

He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?

I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.

We think of strangers as stronger and better than we are.

We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.

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

Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there.

Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life. While there remains even a plaintive memory, a person cannot be cut off, dead. And he thought, “It’s a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man’s life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do...Try to be better than yourself.

We can shoot rockets into space but we can't cure anger or discontent.

In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

And the people listened, and their faces were quiet with listening. The story tellers, gathering attention into their tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words because the tales were great, and the listeners became great through them.

It is my experience that in some areas [my poodle] Charley is more intelligent that I am, but in others he is abysmally ignorant. He can't read, can't drive a car, and has no grasp of mathematics. But in his own field of endeavor, which he is now practicing, the slow, imperial smelling over and anointing on an area, he has no peer. Of course his horizons are limited, but how wide are mine?

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

it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.

When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.

A dying organism is often observed to be capable of extraordinary endurance and strength. .. When any living organism is attacked, its whole function seems to aim towards reproduction.

Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world, of all living things.

I am sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It's small mining-- small mining. You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.

It is a time of quiet joy, the sunny morning. When the glittery dew is on the mallow weeds, each leaf holds a jewel which is beautiful if not valuable. This is no time for hurry or for bustle. Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.

Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.

Intention, good or bad, is not enough.

I wish to God I knew as much about writing as I did when I was 19. I was absolutely certain about most things then. Also, I suspect, more accurate.

It is strange how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place. Everyone must have one, although I never heard a man tell of it.

I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.

When you're a child you're the center of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They're only ghosts furnished for you to talk to.

To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself.