Quotes from John Steinbeck

Why did it revolt me and leave a taste like a spoiled egg? Am I so good, or so kind, or so just? I don't think so. Am I so proud? Well, there's some of that. Am I lazy, too lazy to be involved? There;s an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort.

No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us. What a great burden of guilt men have!

It's a thing to see when a boy comes home. It's a thing to see.

I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed— because 'Thou mayest.

If I'm a little late, don't go before I get there, will you? Would you like to carry my books home? Yes, said Cal. She looked at him long, full in the eyes, until he wanted to drop his gaze, and then she walked away toward her class.

It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry.

Think you've got knocker fever. Come in to the inn tonight and get it cured up." "Maybe that's it," said Adam. "But I never took much satisfaction in a whore." "It's all the same," Charles said. "You shut your eyes and you can't tell the difference.

Grandpa didn't die tonight. He died the minute you took 'im off the place [...] He was that place, an' he knowed it.

I have thought the difference might be that my Mary knows she will live forever, that she will step from the living into another life as easily as she slips from sleep to wakefulness. She knows this with her whole body, so completely that she does not think of it any more than she thinks to breathe. Thus she has time to sleep, time to rest, time to cease to exist for a little.

Then it occured to me that the elicate shades of feeling, of reaction, are the result of communication, and without such communication they tend to disappear. A man with nothing to say has no words.

having nothing that can be stolen, exploited

Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead.

I don't know whether I can accept things or not, Lee said I've never had a chance to try. I've always found myself with some - not less uncertain but less able to take care of uncertainty. I've had to do my weeping - alone.

I wondered why it is that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death than others.

just as the Carthaginians hired mercenaries to do their fighting for them, we Americans bring in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat.

The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind.

Lee carried a tin lantern to light the way, for it was one of those clear early winter nights when the sky riots with stars and the earth seems doubly dark because of them.

Suddenly he knew joy and sorrow felted into one fabric. Courage and fear were one thing too. He found that he had started to hum a droning little tune. He turned, walked through the kitchen, and stood in the doorway, looking at Cathy. She smiled weakly at him, and he thought, What a child! What a helpless child! and a surge of love filled him.

Don't you dare take the lazy way. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry...Whatever you do, it will be you who do it-not your mother.

But whereas most men in their search for contentment destroy themselves and fall wearily short of their targets, Mack and his friends approached contentment casually, quietly, and absorbed it gently.

It was not laziness if he was a rich man. Only the poor were lazy. Just as only the poor were ignorant. A rich man who didn't know anything was spoiled or independent.

Hakaret eÅŸiÄŸinin zeka ve güvenle doÄŸrudan iliÅŸkili olduÄŸunu söylemiÅŸti. ''Orospu çocuÄŸu'' sözü ancak anas?ndan pek emin olmayan bir adam için hakaret say?l?r ama insan Albert Einstein'a nas?l hakaret edebilir ki, demiÅŸti.

Ä°nsan düÅŸünerek yaÅŸam?n? yoluna koyabilir mi, yoksa her ÅŸeyi ak???na m? b?rakmal??

The story was gradually taking shape. Pion liked it this way. It mined a story to have it all come out quickly. The good story lay in half-told things which must be filled in out of the hearer's own experience.