Quotes from John Steinbeck

Joseph stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked upward, waiting for her to reappear. He felt a desire to open his body for her inspection, so that she could see all the hidden things in him, even the things he did not know were there. That would be right, he thought. Then she would know the kind of man I am; and if she knew that she would be a part of me.

began to formulate a new law describing the relationship of protection to despondency. A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.

Tom laughed. "You jus' a-treadin' him on?'' "Sure,'' said Ma. "Take a man, he can get worried an' worried, an' it eats out his liver, an' purty soon he'll jus' lay down and die with his heart et out. But if you can take an' make 'im mad, why, he'll be awright. Pa, he didn' say nothin', but he's mad now. He'll show me now. He's awright.

The new migrants from the dust bowl are here to stay. They are the vest American stock, intelligent, resourceful; and, if given a chance, socially responsible. To attempt to force them into a peonage of starvation and intimidated despair will be unsuccessful. They can be citizens of the highest type, or they can be an army driven by suffering to take what they need. On their future treatment will depend the course they will be force to take.

She stepped around in front of him and stopped him. "You look here, mister. You kiss me now." "Why?" She said slowly, "So everybody will know that I'm Mrs. Lettuce-head.

Al said, We'll burn right up if we got climbin' to do. Have to throw out some a' this stuff. Maybe, we shouldn' a brang that preacher. You'll be glad a that preacher 'fore we're through, said Ma. That preacher'll help us.

There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.

It was a well-balanced family with its conservatives and its radicals, its dreamers and its realists.

Another hundred years were ground up and churned, and what had happened was all muddied by the way folks wanted it to be -- more rich and meaningful the farther back it was.

They watch the girls with level goat-eyes and make disparaging remarks to one another while their insides whimper with longing. In

When he first got the job with Kate, Joe looked for the weaknesses on which he lived—vanity, voluptuousness, anxiety or conscience, greed, hysteria. He knew they were there because she was a woman.

Some people think it's an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well. But the time poultice is no respecter of glories. Everyone gets well if he waits around.

For how can a man without property know the ache of ownership?

Some men there are who go down the dismal wrack of soldiering, surrender themselves, and become faceless. But these had not much face to start with. And maybe you're like that. But there are others who go down, submerge in the common slough, and then rise more themselves than they were, because—because they have lost a littleness of vanity and have gained all the gold of the company and the regiment.

And the books that came into the house, some of them secretly—well, 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. Violence

Thou wilt die soon and thou are not yet simple nor free from perturbations, nor without suspicion of being hurt by external things, nor kindly disposed towards all; nor dost thou yet place wisdom only in acting justly.

A man with a beard was always a little suspect anyway.

You got to have patience. Why, Tom—us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people—we go on.

I will. I surely will. Good-by, ma'am." As

Okies--the owners hated them because they knew they were soft and the Okies strong, that they were fed and the Okies hungry; and perhaps the owners had heard from their grandfathers how easy it is to steal land from a soft man if you are fierce and hungry and armed. The owners hated them.

Adam said, "Well, you can keep it warm," and he continued, "Old Sam Hamilton saw this coming. He said there couldn't be any more universal philosophers. The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb. He saw a time when one man would know only one little fragment, but he would know it well." "Yes," Lee said from the doorway, "and he deplored it. He hated it." "Did he now?" Adam asked.

And she looked forward to heaven as a place where clothes did not get dirty and where food did not have to be cooked and dishes washed. Privately there where some things in Heaven of which she did not quite approve. There was too much singing, and she didn't see how even the Elect could survive for very long the celestial laziness which was promised. She would find something to do in Heaven.

The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in 'Thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—'Thou mayest'—that gives a choice. It

We still got a where we want, even if we got to crawl for the right.