Quotes from John Steinbeck

To a criminal, honesty is foolish.

no se puede luchar contra el dinero sin él

I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?

One child, refused the love he craves, kicks the cat and hides his secret guilt; and another steals so that money will make him loved; and a third conquers the world--and always the guilt and revenge and more guilt.

Lo valioso siempre está oculto en la mente solitaria de un hombre

It is true that ordinarily her voice was shrill, her face hard and sharp as a hatchet, her figure lumpy, and her intentions selfish.

Without money you cannot fight money.

I think the 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.

There is more beauty in the truth even if it is dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this not only strengthens their infirmity and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.

I seen too many guys with land in their head. They never get none under their hand.

The political reality Steinbeck examined in Of Mice and Men, set a "few miles south of Soledad"—Spanish for "solitude"—is the intense loneliness and anger engendered by hopelessness.

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.

Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake and then they go inta town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch. They ain't got nothing to look ahead to.

Usted ve lo que es, mientras que la mayor parte de la gente ve lo que espera ver

a damn about us. We don't have to sit-in no bar room blowin' in our jack jus' because we got no place else to go. If them other guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But not us." Lennie broke in. "But not us! An' why? Because . . . . because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why." He laughed delightedly. "Go on now, George!

The whisky muttered in his ears.

I try to write what seems to me true. If it isn't true for other people, then it isn't good art. But I've only my own eyes to see with. I won't use the eyes of other people.

I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing—maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But 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.

I lived out at Sunlan' Lan' an' Cattle Company's place. Honest to God, they got a cop for ever' ten people. Got one water faucet for 'bout two hundred people.

tone. "All right," she said, "but how do I go about being a boy?

Y es que, como es natural, los hombres sólo se interesan por ellos mismos. Si el oyente no tiene implicación en la historia, no prestará atención, de lo que se puede extraer que una historia grande y duradera tiene que comprometer a todos, o no perdurará

And every fall a great number of men set out to prove that without talent, training, knowledge, or practice they are dead shots with rifle or shotgun. The results are horrid.

He ain't no cuckoo," said George. "He's dumb as hell, but he ain't crazy. An' I ain't so bright neither, or I wouldn't be buckin' barley for my fifty and found. If I was bright, if I was even a little bit smart, I'd have my own little place, an' I'd be bringin' in my own crops, 'stead of doin' all the work and not getting what comes up outta the ground.

As an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.