Quotes by John Steinbeck (Page 2 of 2)

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.

Many are the stories I have heard about myself. I have mistresses I have never met. When I hear that I am a sodomist and a zoophalist then I shall know that I have reached the high point of fame, but I suppose I can hardly expect such exaltation for many years.

Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.

One who was born by the ocean or has associated with it cannot ever be quite content away from it for very long.

Ideas are not dangerous unless they find seeding place in some earth more profound than the mind.

Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of a human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.

We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.

I've always been amused by the contention that brain work is harder than manual labor. I've never known a man to leave a desk for a muck-stick if he could avoid it.

I've always tried out my material on my dogs first. Years ago, when my red setter chewed up the manuscript of 'Of Mice and Men,' I said at the time that the dog must have been an excellent literary critic.

Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world, of all living things.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule--a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.

There's nothing in the world like that first taste of beer.

Aron's training in worldliness was gained from a young man of no experience, which gave him the ability for generalization only the inexperienced can have.

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.

Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' I thought an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.

The Pacific is my home ocean; I knew it first, grew up on its shore, collected marine animals along the coast. I know its moods, its color, its nature.

Once you have lived in New York and made it your home, no place else is good enough.

In my heart there may be doubt that I deserve the Nobel award over other men of letters whom I hold in respect and reverence, but there is no question of my pleasure and pride in having it for myself.

You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.

The trash and litter of nature disappears into the ground with the passing of each year, but man's litter has more permanence.

The first grave. Now we're getting someplace. Houses and children and graves, that's home, Tom. Those are the things that hold a man down.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do...Try to be better than yourself.

The utter insanity of living in a place like this doesn't occur to the 9,000,000 people who inhabit New York. Except for visits I think I shall not be here any more as a resident.

There's nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can't see or hear or touch a man, it's best to let him go.

A good writer always works at the impossible.There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights.

All of them had a restlessness in common.

Boileau said that Kings, Gods and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren't very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor.

Men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everything lovable about them.

It was strange to Old Robert that he, who knew so much more than his neighbors, who had pondered so endlessly, should be not even a good farmer. Sometimes he imagined he understood too many things ever to do anything well.

I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.

We have to make a mark, even if it's only a scribble.

Maybe, kneeling down to atoms, they're becoming atom-sized in their souls. Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage. And think what any specialist misses -- the whole world over his fence.

No -- the stars are close and dear and I have joined the brotherhood of the worlds. And everything's holy -- everything, even me.

The people in flight from the terror behind-strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.

There is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter.

You're buying years of work, toil in the sun; you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.

It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be loved without satiety.

Charley is a mind-reading dog. There have been many trips in his lifetime, and often he has to be left at home. He knows we are going long before the suitcase has come out, and he paces and worries and whines and goes into a state of mild hysteria.

He was born in Bercy on the outskirts of Paris and trained in France, and while he knows a little Poodle-English, he responds quickly only to commands in French. Otherwise he has to translate, and that slows him down.

I remember as a child reading or hearing the words 'The Great Divide' and being stunned by the glorious sound, a proper sound for the granite backbone of a continent. I saw in my mind escarpments rising into the clouds, a kind of natural Great Wall of China.

The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage.

Doc still loved true things but he knew that it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.

If you want to keep a friend, never test him.

When a man comes to die,
no matter what his talents and influences and genius,
if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him
and his dying a cold horror.

For it is my opinion that we enclose and celebrate the freaks of our nation and our civilization. Yellowstone National Park is no more representative of America than is Disneyland.

A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child.

And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?

What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike.

The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness? You only truly, deeply appreciate and are grateful for something when you compare and contrast it to something worse.

Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it.

She sighed as she always does, a deep, gathered breath and a low release of luxury. Some people resent awakening, but not Mary. She comes to a day with the expectancy that it will be good.

But it isn't hunger that drives millions of armed American Males to forests and hills every autumn, as the high incidence of heart failure among the hunters will prove. Somehow the hunting process has to do with masculinity, but I don't quite know how.

Money's easy to make if it's money you want. But with few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.

I always found in myself a dread of the west and a love of the east.

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.

Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.

He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.

It was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.

And even childhood was no good any more--not the way it was. No worry then but how to find a good stone, not round exactly but flattened and water-shaped, to use in a sling pouch cut from a discarded shoe. Where did all the good stones go, and all simplicity?

He shoveled the bacon out on a plate and broke the eggs in the hot grease and they
jumped and fluttered their edges to brown lace and made clucking sounds.

A man with a beard was always a little suspect anyway. You couldn't say you wore a beard because you liked a beard. People didn't like you for telling the truth. You had to say you had a scar so you couldn't shave.

There was no desire in him for a state or condition, no picture in his mind of the thing to be when he had followed his longing; but only a burning and a will overpowering to journey outward and outward after the earliest risen star.

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.

There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a 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 only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.

Curious how a place unvisited can take such hold on the mind so that the very name sets up a ringing.

Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

Fella says today, 'Depression is over. I seen a jackrabbit, an' they wasn't nobody after him.' An' another fella says, 'That aint the reason. Can't afford to kill jackrabbits no more. Catch 'em and milk 'em an' turn 'em loose. One you seen prob'ly gone dry.

It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.

Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.

In March the soft rains continued, and each storm waited courteously until its predecessor sunk beneath the ground.

I would like to sit still for a while but I'm restless you know and sitting still is only an ideal like celibacy and complete cleanliness.

And their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels.

I've always taken my hangovers as consequence, not as a punishment.

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 an' not to no murder. You done right. Don't you kill nobody if you can help it.

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

The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or the breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.

It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.

You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.

It seems to me Montana is a great splash of grandeur. The scale is huge but not overpowering. The land is rich with grass and color, and the mountains are the kind I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

And you know what it is? San Francisco a golden handcuff with the key thrown away.

Thou mayest rule over sin,' Lee. That's it. I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name you a dozen who were not, and they are the ones the world lives by. It is true of the spirit as it is true of battles -- only the winners are remembered.

For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.

Father and son are natural enemies and each is happier and more secure in keeping it that way.

I never fixed no car in my life 'thout cuttin' myself. Now it's done I don't have to worry no more.

The candle aimed its spark of light at heaven, like an artist who consumes himself to become divine.

In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different.

The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

Thus do the gods speak with tiny causes.

Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.

I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion.

What have I to fear but starvation? Kino asked.

Can you honestly love a dishonest thing?

His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.

This I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.

Oh, strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!
And some men eased themselves like setting hens into the nest of death.

Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.

And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.

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

A kind of light spread out from her.
And everything changed color.
And the world opened out.
And a day was good to awaken to.
And there was no limits to anything.
And the people of the world were good and handsome.
And I was not afraid anymore.

The words are meaningless except in terms of feeling. Does anyone act as the result of thought or does feeling stimulate action and sometimes thought implement it.

All great and precious things are lonely.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

There is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp.

I guess there are never enough books.

All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up.

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

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

Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

Time is the only critic without ambition.

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.

I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.

So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda.

I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

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 on the world.

I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.