Quotes from John Steinbeck

And then I saw what I was to see so many times on the journey—a look of longing. "Lord! I wish I could go." "Don't you like it here?" "Sure. It's all right, but I wish I could go." "You don't even know where I'm going." "I don't care. I'd like to go anywhere.

Everything seems to work with a recurring rhythm except life. There is only one birth and only one death. Nothing else is like that.

I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some effection, but with Montana it is love.

The reverse is also true: many a trip continues long after movement in time and space has ceased. I remember a man in Salinas who in his middle years traveled to Honolulu and back, and that journey continued for the rest of his life. We could watch him in his rocking chair on his front porch, his eyes squinted, half-closed, traveling to Honolulu.

The Word is symbol of delight which sucks up men and scenes, trees, plants, factories, and Pekinese. Then the Thing becomes the Word and the back to Thing again, but warped and woven into a fantastic pattern.

I want to see the whole picture - as nearly as I can. I don't want to put on the blinders of 'good' and 'bad', and limit my vision. If I used the term 'good' on a thing I'd lose my license to inspect it, because there might be bad in it. Don't you see? I want to be able to look at the whole thing.

They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyay. Kino sighed with satisfaction -- and that was conversation.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.

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

With all the polls and opinions posts, with newspapers more opinion than news so that we no longer know one from the other....

Wishing just brought earned disappointment.

It don't take no nerve to do somepin when there ain't nothin' else you can do.

Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is--and a woman too, I guess.

Time is the only critic without ambition.

It is a cosmic joke. Preoccupation with survival has set the stage for extinction.

Porque se dice que los humanos no se satisfacen jamás, que se les da una cosa y siempre quieren algo más. Y se dice esto con erróneo desprecio, ya que es una de las mayores virtudes que tiene la especie y que la hace superior a los animales que se dan por satisfechos con lo que tienen.

I seem to know that there's a part of you missing. Some men can't see the color green, but they may never know they can't. I think you are only a part of a human. I can't do anything about that. But I wonder whether you ever feel that something invisible is all around you. It would be horrible if you knew it was there and couldn't see it or feel it.

I think there must have been some other girl printed somewhere in his heart, for he was a man of love and his wife was not a woman to show her feelings.

She gathered some brown seaweed and made a flat damp poultice of it, and this she applied to the baby's swollen shoulder, which was as good a remedy as any and probably better than the doctor could have done. But the remedy lacked his authority because it was simple and didn't cost anything.

Communications must destroy localness, by a slow, inevitable process.

They called him a comical genius and carried his stories carefully home, and they wondered at how the stories spilled out on the way, for they never sounded the same repeated in their own kitchens.

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable... 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.

I've lived in a good climate, and it bores the hell out of me.

Hazel used his trick. They got no starfish there? They got no ocean there said Doc. Oh! said Hazel and he cast frantically about for a peg to hang a new question on. He hated to have a conversation die out like this. He wasn't quick enough. While he was looking for a question Doc asked one. Hazel hated that, it meant casting about in his mind for an answer and casting about in Hazel's mind was like wandering alone in a deserted museum. Hazel's mind was choked with uncataloged exhibits. ...