John Steinbeck Quotes

510 Sourced Quotes

The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size.

John Steinbeck
Change was everywhere. People were gone, or changed, and that was almost like being gone.

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

John Steinbeck
How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?

John Steinbeck
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.

John Steinbeck
A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.

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

John Steinbeck
Intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over...

John Steinbeck
She wasn't happy, but then she wasn't unhappy. She wasn't anything. But I don't believe anyone is a nothing. There has to be something inside, if only to keep the skin from collapsing. This vacant eye, listless hand, this damask cheek dusted like a doughnut with plastic powder, had to have a memory or a dream.

John Steinbeck
As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.

John Steinbeck
Strange how one person can saturate a room with vitality, with excitement. Then there are others, and this dame was one of them, who can drain off energy and joy, can suck pleasure dry and get no sustenance from it. Such people spread a grayness in the air about them.

John Steinbeck
No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe

John Steinbeck
I have taken as much as six years to prepare a book for writing. There is such a delirium of effort in the production of a book; it's like childbirth. And, like childbirth, one forgets the pains immediately so that when you come to write another one you dare to take it up again. Some precious anesthesia sees you through.

John Steinbeck
But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe.

John Steinbeck
Maybe everybody in the whole damn world's scared of each other.

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

John Steinbeck
In a foreseeable future we shall be smothered by our own numbers.…Preoccupation with survival has set the stage for extinction.

John Steinbeck
I guess I'm trying to say: Grab anything that goes by. It may not come around again.

John Steinbeck
Mordeen said: "I used to wonder why this love seemed sweeter than I had ever known, better than many people ever know. And then one day the reason came to me. There are very few great Anythings in the world. In work and art and emotion—the great is very rare. And I have one of the great and beautiful. Now say your yah, yah, Victor, like a child unanswerably answering Wisdom. You will have to do that, I think."

John Steinbeck
Dear Lord,' he said. 'let me be like Aron. Don't make me mean. I don't want to be. If you will let everybody like me, why, I'll give you anything in the world, and if I haven't got it, why, I'll go for to get it. I don't want to be mean. I don't want to be lonely. For Jesus' sake, Amen.

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

John Steinbeck
Prayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork.

John Steinbeck
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.

John Steinbeck
New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it - once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.

John Steinbeck
I do want to make it very convincing. And the best way to do that is to put most of it in dialogue.

John Steinbeck