John Steinbeck Quotes

510 Sourced Quotes

It's all fine to say, Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People will forget —and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are there is no passage of time, people do not forget and you are in the middle of something that does not change.

John Steinbeck
Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts.

John Steinbeck
And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.

John Steinbeck
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.

John Steinbeck
It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

John Steinbeck
I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer — and what trees and seasons smelled like — how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.

John Steinbeck
I know a little bit about a great many things and not enough about any one to make a living in these times.

John Steinbeck
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

John Steinbeck
In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

John Steinbeck
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.

John Steinbeck
A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many. It changes not only in growing light toward zenith and decline again, but in texture and mood, in tone and meaning, warped by a thousand factors of season, of heat or cold, of still or multi winds, torqued by odors, tastes, and the fabrics of ice or grass, of bud or leaf or black-drawn naked limbs. And as a day changes so do its subjects, bugs and birds, cates, dogs, butterflies and people.

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

John Steinbeck
But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—'Thou mayest'— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if 'Thou mayest'—it is also true that 'Thou mayest not.

John Steinbeck
With all our horrors and our faults, somewhere in us there is a shining.

John Steinbeck
We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.

John Steinbeck
Fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live – for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken... fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

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

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
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.

John Steinbeck
If you are using dialogue — say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

John Steinbeck
It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.

John Steinbeck
You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.

John Steinbeck
He never forgot anything but he never bothered to arrange his memories. -Hazel, Cannery Row

John Steinbeck
Do you take pride in your hurt?' Samuel asked. 'Does it make you seem large and tragic?... Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience... there's all that fallow land, and here beside me is all that fallow man. It seems a waste. And I have a bad feeling about waste because I could never afford it. Is it a good feeling to let your life lie fallow?

John Steinbeck
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. (Irish)

John Steinbeck
Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.

John Steinbeck
In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.

John Steinbeck
Why don't you go on west to California? There's work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange. Why, there's always some kind of crop to work in. Why don't you go there?

John Steinbeck
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.

John Steinbeck
I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.

John Steinbeck