John Steinbeck: Trending quotes

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“Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word. And there’s an opening convey of generalities. A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.”

John Steinbeck

Pt. 4
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“Mordeen said: "I used to wonder why this love seemed sweeter than I had ever known, better than many people ever know. And then one day the reason came to me. There are very few great Anythings in the world. In work and art and emotion—the great is very rare. And I have one of the great and beautiful. Now say your yah, yah, Victor, like a child unanswerably answering Wisdom. You will have to do that, I think."”

John Steinbeck book Burning Bright

Mordeen on her love for Joe Saul in Act One: The Circus
Burning Bright (1950)

“A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part One, Chapter V

“Well, God knows he don't need any brains to buck barley bags. But don't you try to put nothing over, Milton. I got my eye on you.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

George; "buck" here means to work at lifting and throwing the sacks of barley
Of Mice and Men (1937)

“Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.”

John Steinbeck

As quoted by John Kenneth Galbraith in the Introduction to The Affluent Society (1977 edition)

“Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.”

John Steinbeck

Pt. 4
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.”

John Steinbeck book Sweet Thursday

Sweet Thursday (1954)

“All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part Two, Chapter XI

“The misery stayed, not thought about but aching away, and sometimes I would have to ask myself, Why do I ache? Men can get used to anything, but it takes time.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), unplaced by chapter

“A little hope, even hopeless hope, never hurt anybody.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), unplaced by chapter

“Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.”

John Steinbeck

Pt. 3
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. [Opening sentence. ]”

John Steinbeck book Cannery Row

Cannery Row (1945)

“I do understand. I understand that you are offered a loveliness and you vomit on it, that you have the gift of love given you such as few men have ever known and you throw on it the acid of your pride, your ugly twisted sense of importance.”

John Steinbeck book Burning Bright

Friend Ed to Joe Saul in Act Three, Scene I: The Sea
Burning Bright (1950)

“Maybe not having time to think is not having the wish to think.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part Two, Chapter XIII

“When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.”

John Steinbeck

Pt. 1
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“Strength and success— they are above morality, above criticism. It seems then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part Two, Chapter XIII

“I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.”

John Steinbeck

"...like captured fireflies" (1955); also published in America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction (2003), p. 142

“In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.”

John Steinbeck

New York Times (2 June 1969)

“No one knows how greatness comes to a man. It may lie in his blackness, sleeping, or it may lance into him like those driven fiery particles from outer space. These things, however, are known about greatness: need gives it life and puts it in action; it never comes without pain; it leaves a man changed, chastened, and exalted at the same time — he can never return to simplicity.”

John Steinbeck book Sweet Thursday

Source: Sweet Thursday (1954), Ch. 36

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

John Steinbeck

“In Awe of Words,” The Exonian, 75th anniversary edition, Exeter University (1930)