Quotes from John Steinbeck

So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda.

Poor Tom did not know and could not learn that dissembling successfully is one of the creative joys of a businessman. To indicate enthusiasm was to be idiotic.

Maybe you'll come to know that every man in every generation is refired.

When the crops were under cover on the Wayne farm near Pittsford in Vermont, when the winter wood was cut and the first light snow lay on the ground, Joseph Wayne went to the wing-back chair by the fireplace late one afternoon and stood before his father.

You're jest a-teasin' yourself up to cry. I don' know what's come at you. Our folks ain't never did that. They took what come to 'em dry-eyed.

Tom said, "Let me beg you never to tell that story to Will. He'd have you locked up." "But the house wasn't worth what I asked!" "I repeat what I said about Will. What's Adam want with your house?" "He's going to move there. Wants the twins to go to school in Salinas." "What'll

FEBRUARY IN SALINAS is likely to be damp and cold and full of miseries. The heaviest rains fall then, and if the river is going to rise, it rises then. February of 1915 was a year heavy with water.

Henry liked fun and avoided when he could any solemn or serious matter, for he confused these with sorrow.

Papers there were in the chest, and parchments, and stiff untanned skins, written in English and Latin and the old Cumric tongue: Morgan was born, Morgan was married, Morgan became a knight, Morgan was hanged. Here lay the history of the house, shameful and glorious.

It's a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man's life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.

George si alzò in piedi. «Ce la faremo,» disse. «Prenderemo quella casetta e andremo a viverci.» Tornò a sedersi. I tre stettero queti, tutti imbambolati nel portento della cosa, ciascuno lanciato nel futuro dove la cosa tanto bella si sarebbe avverata.

Ran to the hallway, screaming for help. The girls and a few Sunday customers crowded into the room. Kate was writhing on the floor. Two of the regulars lifted her onto Faye's bed and tried to straighten her out, but she screamed and doubled up again. The sweat poured from her body and wet her clothes.

Yes, but the bank is only made of men. No, you're wrong there—quite wrong there. 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. The

I don't aim to starve to death before I kill the man that's starving me.

Oh, but strawberries will never taste so good again and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!

Bleedin' like a son-of-a-bitch, he said. Well, I can stop that. He urinated on the ground, picked up a handful of the resulting mud, and plastered it over the wound.

Unii vor spune ca povestea asta este o minciuna, ceea ce nu inseamna ca ceva care nu s-a petrecut este numaidecat o minciuna.

She had learned fear now and her mind sniffed about like a rat looking for an escape.

He saw the world through gray water.

Memory of the knife will be gone when the flesh is gone.

But in my little experience the end is never very different in its nature from the means. Damn it, Jim, you can only build a violent thing with violence.

I printed it once more on my eyes, south, west, and north, and then we hurried away from the permanent and changeless past where my mother is always shooting a wildcat and my father is always burning his name with his love.

They knew that a man so hurt and so perplexed may turn in anger, even on people he loves. They left the men alone to figure and to wonder in the dust. After

It was said that its existence protected decent women. An unmarried man could go to one of these houses and evacuate the sexual energy which was making him uneasy and at the same time maintain the popular attitudes about the purity and loveliness of women. It was a mystery, but then there are many mysterious things in our social thinking.