Quotes from John Steinbeck

If on'y they didn' tell me I got to get off, why, I'd prob'y be in California right now a-eatin' grapes an a-pickin' an orange when I wanted. But them sons-a-bitches says I got to get off-an', Jesus Christ, a man can't, when he's tol' to!

A wife is like a children's movie; always under-appreciated and without either, life would be incomplete

It always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in men: kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest: sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self interest are the traits of success.

Does anyone ever know even the outer fringe of another? What are you like in there? Mary-do you hear? Who are you in there?

There is no knowing how or why dread comes on a parent. Of course, many times apprehension arises when there is no reason for it at all. And it comes most often to the parents of only children, parents who have indulged in black dreams of loss.

Thou art a peanut.

I nearly forgot something my old father told me not long before he died. He said the threshold of insult is in direct relation to intelligence and security.

The trees and the muscled mountains are the world – but not the world apart from man – the world and man – the one inseparable unit man and his environment. Why they should ever have been understood as being separate I do not know.

Perhaps it is so with everyone, that he looks for weakness in the strong to find promise of strength in his weakness.

There was no desire in him for a state or condition, no picture in his mind of the thing to be when he had followed his longing; but only a burning and a will overpowering to journey outward and outward after the earliest risen star.

It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

They fell into a silence. They looked at one another, amazed. This thing they had never really believed in was coming true.

You can only fight Fate so far, and when you give in to it you're very strong; because all of your force flows in one direction.

Yeah," said George. "I'll come. But listen, Curley. The poor bastard's nuts. Don't shoot 'im. He di'n't know what he was doin'.

Parents took honor from a daughter who was a teacher.

And as he was capable of giant joy, so did he harbor huge sorrow, so that when his dog died the world ended.

Consider the blundering anarchic system of the United States the stupidity of some of its lawmakers, the violent reaction, the slowness of its ability to change. Twenty-five key men destroyed could make the Soviet Union stagger, but we could lose our congress, our president, and our general staff and nothing much would have happened. We would go right on. In fact we might be better for it.

It's hard to split a man down the middle and always to reach for the same half.

Ad astra per alia porci

They were students of the expressions of young women as they went in to confession, and they saw them as they came out and read the nature of the sin.

You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.

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

Liza had a finely developed sense of sin Idleness was a sin, and card playing, which was a kind of idleness to her. She was suspicious of fun whether it involved dancing or singing or even laughter. She felt that people having a good time were wide open to the devil. And this was a shame, for Samuel was a laughing man, but I guess Samuel was wide open to the devil. His wife protected him whenever she could.

Now for many years we have suckled on fear and fear alone, and there is no good product of fear. Its children are cruelty and deceit and suspicion germinating in our darkness. And just as surely as we are poisoning the air with our test bombs, so are we poisoned in our souls by fear, faceless, stupid sarcomic terror.