Quotes by John Steinbeck
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And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man.

The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if in no other way, we can see the wild and reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index.

In nature two things do not occur-the wheel and good taste.

The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him -- he has known a fear beyond every other.

The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.

Give me a used Bible and I will, I think, be able to tell you about a man by the places that are edged with the dirt of seeking fingers.

It is the nature of a person as he she grows older to protest against change, particularly changes for the better.

A man without words is a man without thought.

No single organism could be understood without observing and comprehending the entire colony.

Please try not to need me. That's the worst bait of all to a lonely man.

You never oughta drink water when it ain't runnin'.

And I here make a rule-a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting-only the deeply personal and familiar.

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layer of frailty men want to be good and want be loved. Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love.

A man can do a lot of damage in the church. When someone comes here, he's got his guard up. But in church a man's wide open.

Liza with her acceptance could take care of tragedy; she had no real hope this side of Heaven.

A writer of stories is a liar.

It is easy, out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, 'I couldn't help it; the way was set.' But think of the glory of the choice!

I eat stories like grapes.

The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in lots of people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does.

Some people think it's an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well.

I take a pleasure in inquiring into things. I've never been content to pass a stone without looking under it. And it is a black disappointment to me that I can never see the far side of the moon.

They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves.

There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.

And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

People like you to be something, preferably what they are.

There's more beauty in the truth even if it is dreadful beauty.

To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself.

I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody.

I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.... The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

It's almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.

If a man ordered a beer milkshake he'd better do it in a town where he wasn't known.

A strange species we are, We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick. -- John Steinbeck to Adlai Stevenson.

Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is -- and a woman too, I guess.

Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.

You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.

The camera need not be a cold mechanical device. Like the pen, it is as good as the man who uses it. It can be the extension of mind and heart.

I guess this personal hide-and-seek is not unusual. And some people are 'it' all their lives -- hopelessly 'it.

I dislike helplessness in other people and in myself, and this is by far my greatest fear of illness.

The curious hocus-pocus of criticism I can't take seriously. It consists in squirreling up some odd phrases and then waiting for a book to come running by.

Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones.

The warfare between the unaroused male and female is constant and ferocious. Each blames the other for his loss of soul.

My wants are simple. I have no desire to latch onto a monster symbol of fate and power and prove my manhood in titanic piscine war. But sometimes I do like a couple of cooperative fish of frying size.

Oh, I guess I'm physically able to father a child. That's not what I'm thinking. I'm too closely married to a quiet reading lamp.

Lennie said quietly, It ain't no lie. We're gonna do it. Gonna get a little place an' live on the fatta the lan'.

Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world.

Then it is better, sir, to love whom one cannot have? Probably better, Lancelot said. Certainly safer.

A guy needs somebody―to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick.

Possibly the deep feeling is that if people learn to eat one another the food supply would be so generous and so available that no one would be either safe or hungry.

Just set one day's work in front of the last day's work. That's the way it comes out. And that's the only way it does.

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man.

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?

One of the laws of paleontology is that an animal which must protect itself with thick armour is degenerate. It is usually a sign that the species is on the road to extinction.

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

But you can't start over Only a boy can start over You and me Why, we're all that's been.

Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man -- and the Word is with Men.

There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good.

Riches seem to come to the poor in spirit, the poor in interest and joy. To put it straight -- the very rich are a poor bunch of bastards.

She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do.

You ain't worth a greased lack pin to ram you into hell.

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

They successfully combined piracy and puritanism, which aren't so unlike when you come right down to it. Both had a strong dislike for opposition and both had a roving eye for other people's property.

Three hours of writing require twenty hours of preparation. Luckily I have learned to dream about the work, which saves me some working time.

Yes, you should talk, he said. Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth.

Guy don't need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes it jus' works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain't hardly ever a nice fella.

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.

The desert, being an unwanted place, might well be the last stand of life against unlife. For in the rich and moist and wanted areas of the world, life pyramids against itself and in its confusion has finally allied itself with the enemy non-life.

When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.

I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.

I guess this is why I hate governments, all governments. It is always the rule, the fine print, carried out by fine-print men. There's nothing to fight, no wall to hammer with frustrated fists.

I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments.

It was a day as different from other days as dogs are from cats and both of them from chrysanthemums or tidal waves or scarlet fever.

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

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.

We don't take a trip. A trip takes us.

A dog...is a bond between strangers.

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.

With knowledge there is no hope... without hope I would sit motionless, rusting like unused armor.

Fella in business got to lie an' cheat, but he calls it somepin else. That's what's important. You go steal that tire an' you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business.

To find where you are going, you must know where you are.

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper.

Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.