Quotes from John Steinbeck

Samuel may have thought and played and philosophized about death, hut he did not really believe in it. His world did not have death as a member. He, and all around him, was immortal. When real death came it was an outrage, a denial of the immortality he deeply felt, and the one crack in his wall caused the whole structure to crash. I think he had always thought he could argue himself out of death. It was a personal opponent and one he could lick.

Adam's mother ran the farm, bore Adam, and still had time to embrace a primitive theosophy. She felt that her husband would surely be killed by the wild and barbarous rebels, and she prepared herself to get in touch with him in what she called the beyond.

Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshipped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling.

Don' keep ya guard up when nobody ain't sparrin' with ya.

And what could be more frightening than a child with total power? A spear and sword are terrible, God knows. That is why the knight who carries them is first taught pity, justice, mercy, and only last--force.

Will you have a touch of ng-ka-py?" "You mean the drink that tastes of good rotten apples?" "Yes. I can talk better with it." "Maybe I can listen better," said Samuel.

It was his first experience with this kind of love and it nearly killed him.

In utter loneliness, a writer tries to explain the unexplicable.

But from the start I had withheld from him any information about the giant redwoods. It seemed to me that a Long Island poodle who had made his devoirs to Sequoia sempervirens or Sequoia gigantea might be set apart from other dogs--might even be like that Galahad who saw the Grail. The concept is staggering.

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

If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And I here make a rule—a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last.

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it.

Maybe the knowledge is too great and maybe men are growing too small. Maybe, kneeling down to atoms, they're becoming atom-sized in their souls. Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage. And think what any specialist misses--the whole world over his fence.

fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

We got each other, that's what, that gives a hoot in hell about us.

Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

Come along, said Joad. Pa'll be glad to see you. He always said you got too long a pecker for a preacher. He picked up his coat roll and tightened it snugly about his shoes and turtle.

Didn't know anyone could see it," Samuel said. "You know, Lee, I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. And my life has not been a full orchestra for a long time now. A single note only—and that note unchanging sorrow. I'm not alone in my attitude, Lee. It seems to me that too many of us conceive of a life as ending in defeat.

A few nights in the open, my lord, a quiet time and peace. Yes, I admit I am glad. It was good, but it is also good to be alone. We need not hurry. At the end is a tomb. Do we need to rush toward it? It will wait.

It's need that makes all the trouble.

I wanta buy stuff. Stuff I don't need... Stuff settin' out there, you jus' feel like buyin' it whether you need it or not. -Uncle John

Do you know, I am putting off ending this letter as though the end would be the end of something I want to hold on to. That's not true of course - just a feeling like the quick one of hexing your trip so you couldn't go. The mind is capable of any selfishness and it thinks unworthy things whether you want it or not. Best to admit it is a bad child rather than to pretend it is always a good one. Because a bad child can improve but a good one is a liar and nothing can improve a liar.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

In long-range planning for a trip, I think there is a private conviction that it won't happen.