Quotes from John Steinbeck

Let me absorb this thing. Let me try to understand it without private barriers. When I have understood what you are saying, only then will I subject it to my own scrutiny and my own criticism This is the finest of all critical approaches and the rarest.

The honest preachers had energy and go. They fought the devil, no holds barred, boots and eye-gouging permitted. You might get the idea that they howled truth and beauty the way a seal bites out the National Anthem on a row of circus horns. But some of the truth and beauty remained, and the anthem was recognizable.

No one could call him a liar. And this was mainly because the lie was in his head, and any truth coming from his mouth carried the color of the lie.

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

Unless a writer's capable of solitude, he should leave books alone and go into the theater.

A man so hurt and so perplexed may turn in anger, even on people he loves.

Well, we all got to make a livin'. Yeah, Tom said. On'y I wisht they was some way to make her 'thout takin' her away from somebody else.

The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.

The Pacific is my home ocean; I knew it first, grew up on its shore, collected marine animals along the coast. I know its moods, its color, its nature. It was very far inland that I caught the first smell of the Pacific. When one has been long at sea, the smell of land reaches far out to greet one. And the same it true when one has been long inland.

I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks

He was born in fury and he lived in lightning.

For if ever any man were deeply and unconsciously sure that his future would be no better than his past, he might deeply wish to cease to live.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit

The little engine roared and then stopped. Adam sat back for a moment, limp but proud, before he got out. The postmaster looked out between the bars of his golden grill. I see you've got one of the damn things, he said. Have to keep up with the times, said Adam. I predict there'll come a time when you can't find a horse, Mr. Trask. Maybe so. They'll change the face of the countryside. They get their clatter into everything, the postmaster went on.

Her father was frightened by a strange bed or a foreign language or a political party he didn't belong to. Her father truly believed that the Democratic party was a subversive organization whose design would destroy the United States and put it in the hands of bearded communists.

Beyond my failings as a racist, I knew I was not wanted in the South. When people are engaged in something they are not proud of, they do not welcome witnesses.

I don't very much believe in blood," said Samuel. "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.

There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty

How's that for the grapes?

On the fences the shiny blackbirds with red epaulets clicked their dry call. The meadowlarks sang like water, and the wild doves, concealed among the bursting leaves of the oaks, made a sound of restrained grieving.

It was quite normal in that day for a man to use up three or four wives in a normal lifetime.

We still go where we want, even if we got to crawl for the right.' - Tom Joad (Jr.)

It [the Mexican War] was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murders settled on us, the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible.

Benar. Kita tak pernah lagi menjumpai kebahagiaan yang setara dengan kebahagiaan masa kanak-kanak kita. Pablo mengangguk sedih.