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John Steinbeck Quotes
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John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. was an American author. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception." He has been called "a giant of American letters," and many of his works are considered classics of Western literature.During his writing career, he authored 33 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row , the multi-generation epic East of Eden , and the novellas Of Mice and Men and The Red Pony . The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies.Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists. Wikipedia  

✵ 27. February 1902 – 20. December 1968  •  Other names John Ernst Steinbeck
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John Steinbeck: 366 quotes33 likes

John Steinbeck Quotes

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

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

“What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can read only a few and those perhaps not accurately.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

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

“I think I love you, Cal." -Abra
I'm not good." -Cal
Because you're not good." -Abra”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“When 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 Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

“Don't you dare take the lazy way. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't let me catch you doing it! Now -- look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“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.”

John Steinbeck book Sweet Thursday

Sweet Thursday (1954)

“They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“It is the hour of pearl—the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.”

John Steinbeck book Cannery Row

Source: Cannery Row

“Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.”

John Steinbeck book Tortilla Flat

Source: Tortilla Flat

“And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“Somewhere 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 Steinbeck book The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

Source: The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

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

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

“I'll want to hear,' Samuel said. 'I eat stories like grapes.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“We could live offa the fatta the lan’.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Lennie, in Ch. 3, p. 57
Source: Of Mice and Men (1937)

“But 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 Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

“Failure is a state of mind. It's like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

“You can boast about anything if it's all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“There are two kinds of people in the world, observers and non-observers…”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“Luck, you see, brings bitter friends.”

John Steinbeck book The Pearl

Source: The Pearl (1947), Ch. III

“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.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“Sometimes, a lie is told in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

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

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), unplaced by chapter
Context: Ellen, only last night, asked, 'Daddy, when will we be rich?' But I did not say to her what I know: 'We will be rich soon, and you who handle poverty badly will handle riches equally badly.' And that is true. In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.

“Hard-covered books break up friendships. You loan a hard covered book to a friend and when he doesn’t return it you get mad at him. It makes you mean and petty. But twenty-five cent books are different.”

John Steinbeck

“Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

“We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“He learned that when people are very poor they still have something to give and the impulse to give it.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“There are some times… when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow.”

John Steinbeck book To a God Unknown

Source: To a God Unknown

“I'm jus' pain covered with skin.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

“You don't even know where I'm going."
"I don't care. I'd like to go anywhere.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“As 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 Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“These too are of a burning color--not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were liquid and could raise a cream, that golden cream might be like the color of the poppies.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it.”

John Steinbeck

“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.”

John Steinbeck book Tortilla Flat

Source: Tortilla Flat

“Lennie begged, "Le's do it now. Le's get that place now."
"Sure right now. I gotta. We gotta.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Source: Of Mice and Men