John Steinbeck Quotes

The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.

No matter how weak and negative a good man is, he has as many sins on him as he can bear.

There would come a time in our poverty when we needed a party.

The warfare between the unaroused male and female is constant and ferocious. Each blames the other for his loss of soul.

How we build," Pilon cried. "How our dreams lead us. I

Guys like us got nothing to look ahead to.

Men all do about the same thing when they wake up.

Beans are a roof over your head.

I've always taken my hangovers as consequence, not as a punishment.

They were the worst threats to a home, for they offered ease and thought and companionship as opposed to neatness, order, and properness

I need a dog pretty badly. I dreamed of dogs last night. They sat in a circle and looked at me and I wanted all of them.

The story [Henny-Penny] has the best opening in all literature-"The sky is falling," cried Henny-Penny, "and a piece of it fell on my tail.

Muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him - goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest.

I nearly always write just as I nearly always breathe.

What a wonderful thing a woman is. I can admire what they do even if I don't understand why.

There is no loneliness like that of one who can only give and no anger like that of those who only receive and hate the weight of debt.

Oh, the strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!

Look out for luck. You can't trus' luck.

Luck, you see, brings bitter friends.

Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.

All great and precious things are lonely.

It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.

Doc tips his hat to dogs as he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him.

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

The difficulty of course is that I like women. It is only wives I am in trouble with.

I would like to sit still for a while but I'm restless you know and sitting still is only an ideal like celibacy and complete cleanliness.

We could live offa the fatta the lan'.

And the owners not only did not work the farms any more, many of them had never seen the farms they owned.

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.

A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed. Remember this thing. I have known boys forty years old because there was no need for a man:

He was very rich; he bought eggs to throw at a Chinaman. And one of those eggs missed the Chinaman and hit a policeman. So, Danny was in jail.

She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do.

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.

Things that happen are of no importance. But from everything that happens, there is a lesson to be learned.

The party had all the best qualities of a riot and a night on the barricades.

Like most passionate nations, Texas has its own history based on, but not limited by, facts.

I'm glad there's love here. That's all.

It seemed to me that the earth was generous and outgoing here in the heartland, and perhaps the people took a cue from it.

The final weapon is the brain, all else is supplemental.

Perhaps my greatest wisdom is the knowledge that I do not know.

Henry liked fun and avoided when he could any solemn or serious matter, for he confused these with sorrow.

Pre-Cambrian Memory.

And when a man's feelings are hurt he wants to strike at something, and Abel was in the way of his anger.

The law was designed to save, not to destroy.

He wanted to say something beautiful, I think.

Show me the man who isn't interested in discussing himself.

Every little boy thinks he invented sin.

It ain't kin we? It's will we?

Change was everywhere. People were gone, or changed, and that was almost like being gone.

black gloom settled over the Palace Flophouse.

They knew it would take a long time for the dust to settle out of the air.

The gilded chairs covered with their worn tapestry were set about stiffly like too many servants with nothing to do.

It's a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.

...people don't take trips - trips take people.

I ain't gonna try to teach 'em nothin'. I'm gonna try to learn.

My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.

He smiled at her as a man might smile at a memory.

I had to be self-contained, a kind of casual turtle carrying his house on his back.

A question is a trap and an answer is your foot in it.

A light in the daytime is a lonely thing.

When angered she had a terrible eye which could blanch the skin off a bad child as easily as if he were a boiled almond.

Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time." Her

You was always too busy pullen' little girls' pigtails when I give you the Holy Sperit.

I guess this personal hide-and-seek is not unusual. And some people are 'it' all their lives - hopelessly 'it.

She liked the idea so well that she felt there must be something bordering on sin involved in it.

A man is a very important thing-maybe more important than a star.

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.

I don't want advice.' 'Nobody does. It's a giver's present.

There was a wall against learning. A man wanted his children to read, to figure, and that was enough. More might make them dissatisfied and flighty.

And in his dream, Coyotito was reading from a book as large as a house, with letters as big as dogs, and the words galloped and played on the book.

That man who is more then his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis.

His father knew every place in the boy where a word would fester.

I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat. These

No matter how good a man is, there's always some horse can pitch him.

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

The camera need not be a cold mechanical device. Like the pen, it is as good as the man who uses it. It can be the extension of mind and heart ...

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

I know it might be better for you to come out from under your might-have-beens, into the winds of the world.

Anything that just costs money is cheap.

the dirty romans are forming up for calvery.

I dislike helplessness in other people and in myself, and this is by far my greatest fear of illness.

[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.

Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?

The candle aimed its spark of light at heaven, like an artist who consumes himself to become divine.

And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living.

Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn't quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.

Timshel - thou mayest

turning its periscope head from side to side. Suddenly

You stay out here a little while, an' if you smell any roses, you come let me smell, too.

I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.

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

Woman can change better'n man," Ma said soothingly. "Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head.

It don't cost money to ask.

People don't want advice ... only corroboration.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another-but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

If we could learn to like ourselves, even a little, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.

The break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

I don't know. It's like getting up in the morning. I don't want to get up but I don't want to stay in bed either.

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