John Steinbeck Quotes

510 Sourced Quotes

You got a God. Don't make no difference if you don' know what he looks like.

John Steinbeck
A plan is a real thing, and things projected are experienced. A plan once made and visualized becomes a reality along with other realities—never to be destroyed but easily to be attacked.

John Steinbeck
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...

John Steinbeck
November is chill, frosted mornings with a silver sun rising behind the trees, red cardinals at the feeders, and squirrels running scallops along the tops of the gray stone walls.

John Steinbeck
Only God sees the sparrow fall, but even God doesn't do anything about it.

John Steinbeck
Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.

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

John Steinbeck
In the streets of New York between seven and nine in the morning you will see the slow procession of dog and downer proceeding from street to tree to hydrant to trash basket. They are apartment dogs. They are taken out twice a day, and, while it is a cliché, it is truly amazing how owner and dog resemble each other. They grow to walk alike and have the same set of head.

John Steinbeck
You watch your place, nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy, it ain't even funny.

John Steinbeck
The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels.

John Steinbeck
There's an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort.

John Steinbeck
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.

John Steinbeck
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.

John Steinbeck
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. Surely most men are destroyed, but there are others who like pillars of fire guide frightened men through the darkness. 'Thou mayest, Thou mayest!' What glory!

John Steinbeck
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.

John Steinbeck
Once Charley fell in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully.

John Steinbeck
We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought.

John Steinbeck
I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.

John Steinbeck
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.

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

John Steinbeck
Ever'body's askin' that. "What we comin' to?" Seems to me we don't never come to nothin'. Always on the way.

John Steinbeck
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.

John Steinbeck
When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to catch whole for they will break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book-to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.

John Steinbeck
My dreams are the problems of the day stepped up to absurdity, a little like men dancing, wearing the horns and masks of animals.

John Steinbeck
Well, God knows he don't need any brains to buck barley bags. But don't you try to put nothing over, Milton. I got my eye on you.

John Steinbeck
Doc tips his hat to dogs as he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him.

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

John Steinbeck
I have never even wondered about the comparative standing of writers. I don't understand that. Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product is turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. Consequently criticism doesn't mean anything to me. As a disciplinary matter, it is too late.

John Steinbeck
Well, I never seen one guy take so much trouble for another guy. I just like to know what your interest is.

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

John Steinbeck