Quotes from John Steinbeck

It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods.

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.

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

George's voice became deeper. He repeated his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before. 'Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch. They ain't got nothing to look ahead to.

Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.

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

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.

You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.

Yes, you will. And I will warn you now that not their blood but your suspicion might build evil in them. They will be what you expect of them…I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb. You can't make a race horse of a pig. No, said Samuel, but you can make a very fast pig.

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.

Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.

I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn't ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.

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

There are two kinds of people in the world, observers and non-observers...

This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from I to we. If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into I, and cuts you off forever from the we.

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.

I'm gettin' tired way past where sleep rests me.

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.

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

He said, I am a man, and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god.

Then it don' matter. Then I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be ever'where - wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' - I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build, why, I'll be there.

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.

If a story is not about the hearer he [or she] will not listen . . . A great lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting--only the deeply personal and familiar.

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.