John Steinbeck: Doing

“There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

People

“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic?… Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Thinking , Parting , Hurt

“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

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

“Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Deep , Stupidity

“The death of children by starvation in our valleys is simply staggering. … I'll do what I can. … Funny how mean and little books become in the face of such tragedies.”

John Steinbeck

Letter to Elizabeth Otis (1938), as quoted in Conversations with John Steinbeck (1988) edited by Thomas Fensch, p. 37
Context: I must go over into the interior valleys. … There are five thousand families starving to death over there, not just hungry but actually starving. The government is trying to feed them and get medical attention to them, with the Fascist group of utilities and banks and huge growers sabotaging the thing all along the line, and yelling for a balanced budget. In one tent there were twenty people quarantined for small pox and two of the women are to have babies in that tent this week. I've tied into the thing from the first and I must get down there and see it and see if I can do something to knock these murderers on the heads.
Do you know what they're afraid of? They think that if these people are allowed to live in camps with proper sanitary facilities they will organize, and that is the bugbear of the large landowner and the corporate farmer. The states and counties will give them nothing because they are outsiders. But the crops of any part of this state could not be harvested without them. … The death of children by starvation in our valleys is simply staggering. … I'll do what I can. … Funny how mean and little books become in the face of such tragedies.

Death , Children , Books

“You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?”

John Steinbeck book Sweet Thursday

Source: Sweet Thursday

Beauty , Light , Time , Sun

“You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

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