Quotes from John Steinbeck

In the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

There was a man, who perhaps made many errors in performance but whose effective life was devoted to making men brave and dignified and good in a time when they were poor and frightened and when ugly forces were loose in the world to utilize their fears. This man was hated by the few. When he died the people burst into tears in the streets and their minds wailed, "What can we do now? How can we go on without him?

The houses were vacant, and a vacant house falls quickly apart.

I don't know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good.

Now Kino lay in the cave entrance, his chin braced on his crossed arms, and he watched the blue shadow of the mountain move out across the brushy desert below until it reached the Gulf, and the long twilight of the shadow was over the land.

When you know a friend is there you do not go to see him. Then he's gone and you blast your conscience to shreds that you did not see him.

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

They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway.

Joseph saw how he could make a gesture with his arms and hands, that would sweep in and indicate and symbolize the ripe stars and the whole cup of the sky, the land, eddied with black trees, and the crested waves that were the mountains, an earth storm, frozen in the peak of its rushing, or stone breakers moving eastward with infinite slowness. Joseph wondered whether there were any words to say these things. He said, I like the night. It's more strong than the day.

She looked at him suddenly and closely, to see how he had come so close so quickly. She looked for motive on his face, and found nothing but friendliness. Then she looked at the frayed seams on his white coat, and she was reassured.

The people in flight from the terror behind—strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.

The Western States are nervous under the beginning change. Need is the stimulus to concept, concept to action. A half-million people moving over the country; a million more resting, ready to move; ten million more feeling the first nervousness.

The great owners, striking at the immediate thing ... not knowing these things are results, not causes.

Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain, shared with no one.

It seemed to me that the earth was generous and outgoing here in the heartland, and perhaps the people took a cue from it.

Cats drip over the fences and slither like syrup over the ground to look for fish heads. Silent

Tom's cowardice was as huge as his courage, as it must be in great men. His violence balanced his tenderness, and himself was a pitted battlefield of his own forces.

I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen." ? John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

No. No—only a kind of sinking in the heart. Maybe later I'll sort it out to hatred. There was no interval from loveliness to horror, you see. I'm confused, confused.

Then there were his education and his reading, the books he bought and borrowed, his knowledge of things that could not be eaten or worn or cohabited with, his interest in poetry and his respect for good writing.

Having too many THINGS, he says, [Americans] spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul. A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and Nature throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick.

I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live...

Some children want to be babies and some want to be adults. Few are content with their age.

I do wonder whether there will come a time when we can no longer afford our wastefulness