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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
John Steinbeck photo
John Steinbeck: 366   quotes 33   likes

John Steinbeck Quotes

“But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Cats , Thinking , Bee

“… intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over…”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

Fate

“Well, I never seen one guy take so much trouble for another guy. I just like to know what your interest is.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Source: Of Mice and Men

Guy

“Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God.”

John Steinbeck book Tortilla Flat

Source: Tortilla Flat

God , Way , Fight

“If a man ordered a beer milkshake he'd better do it in a town where he wasn't known.”

John Steinbeck book Cannery Row

Source: Cannery Row

Beer

“The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.”

John Steinbeck

New York Times (2 June 1969)

World

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

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden (1952)

Time

“There's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Personality

“It's almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.”

John Steinbeck book The Pastures of Heaven

Source: The Pastures of Heaven

Reading

“Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Source: Of Mice and Men

“I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“There's an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

Effort

“Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

Money , Change

“Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life - so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we do.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Life

“Once Charley fell in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Love , Problem

“It was a day as different from other days as dogs are from cats and both of them from chrysanthemums or tidal waves or scarlet fever.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

Dogs , Cats

“The flies have conquered the flypaper.”

John Steinbeck book The Moon Is Down

Source: The Moon Is Down

“To the heavens on the wings of a pig.”

John Steinbeck

“Well, I remember this girl. I am not whole without her. I am not alive without her. When she was with me I was more alive than I have ever been, and not only when she was pleasant either. Even when we were fighting I was whole.”

John Steinbeck book Sweet Thursday

Source: Sweet Thursday

Girl , Fight

“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike.
An all plans, safeguards, policies and coercion are fruitless.
We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

John Steinbeck
Personality

“This was an evil beyond thinking. The killing of a man was not so evil as the killing of a boat. For a boat does not have sons, and a boat cannot protect itself, and a wounded boat does not heal.”

John Steinbeck book The Pearl

Source: The Pearl

Thinking , Evil

“This is not theology. I have no bent towards gods. But 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 Steinbeck book East of Eden

Variant: But 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.
Source: East of Eden

Love , God , Soul , Universe

“They come, an' they quit an' go on; an' every damn one of 'em's got a little piece of land in his head. An' never a God damn one of 'em ever gets it.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Source: Of Mice and Men

God

“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.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Sadness

“When Kino had finished, Juana came back to the fire and ate her breakfast. They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway. Kino sighed with satisfaction - and that was conversation.”

John Steinbeck book The Pearl

Source: The Pearl

“The clouds appeared and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Appearance

“All of them had a restlessness in common.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Travel

“I know three things will never be believed - the true, the probable, and the logical”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

“The sad ones are those who waste their energy in trying to hold it back, for they can only feel bitterness in loss and no joy in gain.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Sadness , Feeling , Loss , Joy

“You're buying years of work, toil in the sun; you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Sun

“This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Variant: And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.
Source: East of Eden (1952)
Context: And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.
Context: Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in art, in music, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

World , Freedom , Fight

“And now, our submarines are armed with mass murder, our silly, only way of deterring mass murder.”

John Steinbeck

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

Way

“I have owed you this letter for a very long time — but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.”

John Steinbeck

Letter to his literary agent, found on his desk after his death in 1968
Writers at Work (1977)

Time

“My dreams are the problems of the day stepped up to absurdity, a little like men dancing, wearing the horns and masks of animals.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

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

Men , Dreams , Problem , Animals

“For the first time I am working on a book that is not limited and that will take every bit of experience and thought and feeling that I have.”

John Steinbeck

Journal entry (11 June 1938), published in Working Days : The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, 1938-1941 (1990) edited by Robert DeMott

Books , Feeling , Time

“I have never even wondered about the comparative standing of writers. I don't understand that. Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product is turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. Consequently criticism doesn't mean anything to me. As a disciplinary matter, it is too late.”

John Steinbeck

Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 45 (1969)

Secret , Understanding , Sense , Personality

“We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left. All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed — selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful — we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic — and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? That's what we are, Cal — all of us. You aren't very different.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

East of Eden (1952)

Children , Color , Sense , Time

“Sometimes it's great fun to be silly, like children playing statues and dying of laughter. And sometimes being silly breaks the even pace and lets you get a new start.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

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

Children , Laughter

“It is so easy a thing to give—only great men have the courage and courtesy and, yes, the generosity to receive.”

John Steinbeck book Burning Bright

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

Men , Courage

“No little appetite or pain, no carelessness or meanness in him escaped her; no thought or dream or longing in him ever reached her. And yet several times in her life she had seen the stars.”

John Steinbeck book The Moon Is Down

The Moon Is Down (1942), p. 7

Life , Pain , Dreams , Star

“Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.”

John Steinbeck

When asked his reaction to John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address
Quoted by Atlantic magazine (November 1969)

“There used to be a thing or a commodity we put great store by. It was called the People. Find out where the People have gone. I don’t mean the square-eyed toothpaste-and-hair-dye people or the new-car-or-bust people, or the success-and-coronary people. Maybe they never existed, but if there ever were the People, that’s the commodity the Declaration was talking about, and Mr. Lincoln.”

John Steinbeck

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

People , Cars , Success

“With humanity's long proud history of standing firm against natural enemies, sometimes in the face of almost certain defeat and extinction, we would be cowardly and stupid to leave the field on the eve of our greatest potential victory.”

John Steinbeck

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1962)

Stupidity , History , Nature , Victory

“The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California.”

John Steinbeck

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

Nature