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Quotes About Change

In all such local tragedies time works like a damp brush on water color. The sharp edges blur, the ache goes out of it, the colors melt together, and from the many separated lines a solid gray emerges.
~ John Steinbeck
And the anger began to ferment.
~ John Steinbeck
But when you get hunted—that's different. Somepin happens to you. You ain't strong; maybe you're fierce, but you ain't strong. I been hunted now for a long time. I ain't a hunter no more. I'd maybe shoot a fella in the dark, but I don't maul nobody with a fence stake no more. It don't do no good to fool you or me. That's how it is.
~ John Steinbeck
No, it ain't, Ma smiled. It ain't, Pa. An' that's one more thing a woman knows. I noticed that. Man, he lives in jerks -- baby born an' a man dies, an' that's a jerk -- gets a farm an' loses his farm, an' that's a jerk. Woman, it's all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain't gonna die out. People is goin' on -- changin' a little, maybe, but goin' right on.
~ John Steinbeck
Fella can get so he misses the noise of a saw mill
~ John Steinbeck
Now the tents of the late-comers filled the little flat, and those who had the boxcars were old-timers, and in a way aristocrats.
~ John Steinbeck
The dusk passed into dark, and the desert stars came out in the soft sky, stars stabbing and sharp, with few points and rays to them, and the sky was velvet. And the heat changed. While the sun was up, it was a beating, flailing heat, but now the heat came from below, from the earth itself, and the heat was thick and muffling.
~ John Steinbeck
Toen ik heel jong was en de drang om ergens anders te zijn voelde, verzekerden volwassen mensen me dat volwassenheid me van dit verlangen af zou helpen. Toen ik, wat jaren betreft, volwassen was geworden, was middelbare leeftijd de voorgeschreven remedie. Op middelbare leeftijd werd mij verzekerd dat een nog hogere leeftijd de koorts zou doen afnemen en nu ik achtenvijftig ben, is seniliteit wellicht de oplossing.
~ John Steinbeck
La donna può cambiare meglio dell'uomo, disse Ma' in tono rassicurante. La donna la vita ce l'ha tutta nelle braccia. L'uomo ce l'ha tutta nella testa. Non ti devi scoraggiare. Magari... be', magari l'anno prossimo abbiamo un posto tutto per noi.
~ John Steinbeck
the room leaped to darkness.
~ John Steinbeck
Seems like our life's over and done. No, it ain't, Ma smiled. It ain't, Pa. An' that's one more thing a woman knows. I noticed that. Man, he lives in jerks -- baby born an' a man dies, an' that's a jerk -- gets a farm an' loses a farm, an' that's a jerk. Woman, it's all one flow, like a stream, like eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain't gonna die out. People is goin' on -- changin' a little, maybe, but goin' right on.
~ John Steinbeck
People didn't really believe in war even while they planned it. The Salinas Valley lived about as it always had.
~ John Steinbeck
people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.
~ John Steinbeck
But Kino had lost his old world and he must clamber on to a new one. For his dream of the future was real and never to be destroyed, and he said I will go, and that made a real thing too.
~ John Steinbeck
Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the universe loves nothing so much as to change things which are and to make new things like them. For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.
~ John Steinbeck
Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered. "Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the universe loves nothing so much as to change things which are and to make new things like them. For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.
~ John Steinbeck
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)
~ John Steinbeck
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.
~ John Steinbeck
He had thought over the ruin of his status as a man with a house to rent; and, all this clutter of necessary and decent emotion having been satisfied and swept away, he had finally slipped into his true emotion, one of relief that at least one of his burdens was removed. "If it were still there, I would be covetous of the rent," he thought. "My friends have been cool toward me because they owed me money. Now we can be free and happy again.
~ John Steinbeck
As an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.
~ John Steinbeck
when people have heard of you, favorably or not, they change; they become, through shyness or the other qualities that publicity inspires, something they are not under ordinary circumstances
~ John Steinbeck
And sometimes being silly breaks the even pace and lets you get a new start.
~ John Steinbeck
dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green
~ John Steinbeck
No hay espíritu más desprendido en el mundo que el de un pobre a quien de pronto favorece la fortuna.
~ John Steinbeck