Quotes from John Steinbeck

I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?

Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.

Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.

I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.

I guess there are never enough books.

To be alive at all is to have scars.

My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.

When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people.

Anything that just costs money is cheap.

Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.

As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

The misery stayed, not thought about but aching away, and sometimes I would have to ask myself, Why do I ache? Men can get used to anything, but it takes time.

Don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens - The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

If you understand each other you will be kind to each other.

Humanity has been passing through a gray and desolate time of confusion.

Maybe not having time to think is not having the wish to think.

Best thing is to get the words down every day. And it is time to start now.

No one knows my ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time.

It's one of the great fallacies, it seems to me, that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to man.

Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.

For the first time I am working on a book that is not limited and that will take every bit of experience and thought and feeling that I have.

It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge intime, toprotest againstchange, particularlychangefor the better.