Quotes from John Steinbeck

I ain't felt so—safe in a long time. People needs—to help.

A frightened sorrow has closed down over my heart.

Maybe—maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure—never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself?

Mordeen, he said, I love the child. His voice swelled and he spoke loudly. Mordeen, I love our child. And he raised his head and cried in triumph, Mordeen, I love my son.

Her head was small and round and it held small round convictions.

printings, he told Pascal Covici, his editor at The Viking Press, that he was "immensely pleased

Our treasured and nostalgic picture of the village general store, the cracker-barrel store where an informed yeomanry gather to express opinions and formulate the national character, is very rapidly disappearing. People who once held family fortresses against wind and weather, against scourges of frost and drought and insect enemies, no cluster against the busy breast of the big town. (p 56)

They had no argument, no system, nothing but their numbers and their needs.

A chi è nato senza coscienza, l'uomo che ne è afflitto deve apparire ridicolo. Per un criminale l'onestà è stupida. Non dobbiamo dimenticare che il mostro non è che una deviazione, e che per un mostro la normalità è mostruosa.

next thing is opinions. You and me is always busting out with opinions. Hell Susy, we ain't got no opinions. We just say stuff we heard or seen in the movies. We're scared we'll miss something, like running for the bus. That's the second rule: lay off opinions because you really ain't got any.

Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves any more, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coattails.

And, as with all retold tales that are in people's hearts, there are only good and bad things and black and white things and good and evil things and no in-between anywhere.

I thought my blood must survive—my line—but it's not so. My knowledge, yes—the long knowledge remembered, repeated, the pride, yes, the pride and warmth, Mordeen, warmth and companionship and love so that the loneliness we wear like icy clothes is not always there. These I can give.

There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both.

Tom grinned. "It don't take no nerve to do somepin when there ain't nothin' else you can do.

finally, in our time a beard is the one thing a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked.

Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue, we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.

Samuel, she said, you're the most contentious man this world has ever seen. Yes, Mother. Don't agree with me all the time. It hints of insincerity. Speak up for yourself.

Acaso el mejor conversador del mundo es aquel que ayuda a hablar a los demás.

They ain't got nothing to look ahead to.

When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something—anything—before it is all gone.

She would find something to do in Heaven. There must be something to take up one's time -- some clouds to darn, some weary wings to rub with liniment. Maybe the collars of the robes needed turning now and then, and when you come right down to it, she couldn't believe that even in Heaven there would not be cobwebs in some corner to be knocked down with a cloth-covered broom.

Men and women huddled in their houses, and they tied handkerchiefs over their noses when they went out, and wore goggles to protect their eyes.