Quotes from John Steinbeck

How often one goes to sleep troubled and full of pain, not knowing what causes the travail, and in the morning a whole new direction and clearness is there, maybe the result of the black reasoning. And again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and chest are tight and electric with joy, and nothing in the thoughts to justify it or cause it.

Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels.

After listening to all this information we came to the conclusion that the world of Sir John Mandeville has by no means disappeared, that the world of two-headed men and flying serpents has not disappeared. And, indeed, while we were away the flying saucers appeared, which do nothing to overturn our thesis. And it seems to us now the most dangerous tendency in the world is the desire to believe a rumor rather than to pin down a fact.

And just as there was a cleanness about his body, so there was a cleanness in his thinking. Men coming to his blacksmith shop to talk and listen dropped their cursing for a while, not from any kind of restraint but automatically, as though this were not the place for it.

Monterey is a place, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.

It's a hard thing to leave any deeply routined life, even if you hate it.

I don't think I've ever known what you people call happiness. We think of contentment as the desirable thing, and maybe that's negative.

Fark bir kiÅŸidedir, tek ba??na bir kiÅŸide... Yegane güç, bir tek sendedir. BaÅŸka hiçbir ÅŸeye güvenemezsin.

I'll rustle up some dinner.

Samuel smiled at him. "They say man lived in trees one time. Somebody had to get dissatisfied with a high limb or your feet would not be touching flat ground now.

The family met at the most important place, near the truck. The house was dead, and the fields were dead; but this truck was the active thing, the living principle.

He was concupiscent as a rabbit and gentle as hell.

And in the summer the river didn't run at all above ground.

Ä°ÅŸe en ba??ndan baÅŸla ve hat?rlayabildiÄŸin her ÅŸeyi sonuna kadar akl?nda geçir. Zihnine geri geldikçe ayn? ÅŸeyi baÅŸtan sona tekrarla. Bir süre sonra yorulur, parça parça silinir, çok geçmeden tümüyle kaybolur.

A farmer cannot think too much evil of a good farmer.

He had good children and he raised them fine. All doing well -maybe except Joe...they're talking about sending him to college, but all the rest are fine.

This was a man, she thought, a man of complete manness. This was the kind of a man that a pure woman would want to have because he wouldn't even want to be part woman. He would be content with his own sex. He wouldn't ever try to understand women and that would be a relief. He would just take what he wanted from them.

Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong. But this culture is fenced, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back. Might it not be that in the dark pools of some men the evil grows strong enough to wriggle over the fence and swim free? Would not such a man be our monster, and are we not related to him in our hidden water? It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels

When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God.

Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it?

Was she very beautiful, Samuel? To you she was because you built her. I don't think you ever saw her--only your own creation.

Difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I

Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything.

If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen . . . A great lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting--only the deeply personal and familiar.