Quotes from John Steinbeck

Ci sono tanti mondi, quante sono le giornate.

Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill? Herodotus

A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.

his writings derive from a basically romantic temperament)

Sadness and death, she thought, and death and sadness, and it wrenched in her stomach against the soreness. You just have to wait around long enough and it will come.

Ä°ÅŸ 'yapabilir miyiz'e dayan?rsa, hiçbir ÅŸey yapamay?z. Ama iÅŸ 'yapar?z'a gelirse, o zaman istediÄŸimiz ÅŸeyi yapar?z.

A frightened sorrow has closed down over my heart. I wish I were a child so I could cry. I'm too old to be afraid like this. And I've not felt such despair since a bird died in my hand by a flowing water long ago

We have never understood why men mount the heads of animals and hang them up to look down on their conquerors. Possibly it feels good to these men to be superior to animals, but it does seem that if they were sure of it they would not have to prove it. Often

You seen what they done to my dog tonight? They says he wasn't no good to himself nor nobody else. When they can me here I wisht somebody'd shoot me. But they won't do nothing like that. I won't have no place to go, an' I can't get no more jobs.

Got a lot of sinful idears- but they seem kinda sensible

Because they were not hurt or insulted, they were not defensive or combative. Because their dignity was intact, they had no need to be overbearing, and because the Cooper boys had never heard that they were inferior, their minds could grow to their true limits.

Then the soldiers went to Mexico and it was a kind of painful picnic. Nobody knows why you go to a picnic to be uncomfortable when it is so easy and pleasant to eat at home. The Mexican War did two good things though. We got a lot of western land, damn near doubled our size, and besides that it was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murder settled on us the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible.

tell ya, a one-eye' fella got a hard row

She's about as wide open as a fist.

To his mind, a healthy woman was a broke woman. A dame with money was a kind of a half-assed man.

A man who gets few letters does not open one lightly.

Ask him! The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you.

Y cuando aquella cosecha crecía y luego se segaba, ningún hombre había desmigajado un terrón caliente con sus manos, dejando la tierra cribarse entre las puntas de los dedos; ninguno había palpado la semilla ni anhelado que ésta germinase.

The Irish do have a despairing quality of gaiety, but they have also a dour and brooding ghost that rides on their shoulders and peers in on their thoughts.

And when a man's feelings are hurt he wants to strike at something

wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.

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

most readers responded to the "surface story," trusting the tale rather than the teller. It is indeed this surface story that is the source of the novel's power

Her faith is a mountain, and you, my son, haven't even got a shovel yet.