Quotes from John Steinbeck

A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there was no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid anymore.

Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.

Horace Quinn remembered questioning Adam so very long ago, remembered him as a man in agony. He could still see Adam's haunted and horrified eyes. He had thought then of Adam as a man of such honesty that he couldn't conceive anything else. Adam had been set apart—an invisible wall cut him off from the world. You couldn't get into him—he couldn't get out to you. But in that old agony there had been no wall.

It's funny how you want to do a thing and never do it.

If something was untrue and you didn't know it, that was error. But if you knew a true thing and changed it to a false thing, both you and it were loathsome.

And if these men steal, if there is developing among them a suspicion and hatred of well-dressed, satisfied people, the reason is not to be sought in their origin nor in any tendency to weakness in their character.

Woman can change better'n man, Ma said soothingly. Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head.

When angered she had a terrible eye which could blanch the skin off a bad child as easily as if he were a boiled almond.

A good writer always works at the impossible.

I know that sometimes a lie is used in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost. That's a running sore.

Guys like us are the loneliest in the world. No family. No place where we belong. Nothing to look forward to. We're different, we have a future. We have someone who gives a damn about us. I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you and that's why.

The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.

Those people might have been murderers, sadists, brutes, ugly apish subhumans for all I knew, but I found myself thinking, "What charming people, what flair, how beautiful they are. How I wish I knew them." And all based on the delicious smell of soup.

And then the men lay down and put their heads in the girls' laps and looked up into their faces. And they smiled at each other, a tired and peaceful and wonderful secret.

His mind grinned inward at itself.

It must be that there are years unlike other years, as different in climate and direction and mood as one day can be from another day. This year of 1960 was a year of change, a year when secret fears come into the open, when discontent stops being dormant and changes gradually to anger. It wasn't only in me or in New Baytown. Presidential nominations would be coming up soon and in the air the discontent was changing to anger and with the excitement anger brings.

And Ma smiled sadly, He is. Tommy's growed way up - way up so I can't get aholt of 'im sometimes.

What have I to fear but starvation? Kino asked.

Una's death struck Samuel like a silent earthquake. He said no brave and reassuring words, he simply sat alone and rocked himself.

And this Kino knew also - that the gods do not love men's plans, and the gods do not love success unless it comes by accident.

a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether he is doing right or wrong.

Can you hear me, Father? Can you understand me?" The eyes did not change or move. "I did it," Cal cried. "I'm responsible for Aron's death and for your sickness. I took him to Kate's. I showed him his mother. That's why he went away. I don't want to do bad things—but I do them.

The sheriffs swore in new deputies and ordered new rifles; and the comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.

I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby.