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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Doc tips his hat to dogs as he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him.
John Steinbeck
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The candle aimed its spark of light at heaven, like an artist who consumes himself to become divine.
John Steinbeck
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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
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Well, I never seen one guy take so much trouble for another guy. I just like to know what your interest is.
John Steinbeck
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It was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.
John Steinbeck
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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
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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
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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
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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
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It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.
John Steinbeck
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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
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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
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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
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In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
John Steinbeck
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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
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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
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Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is — and a woman too, I guess.
John Steinbeck
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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
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With all our horrors and our faults, somewhere in us there is a shining.
John Steinbeck
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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
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Quote of the day
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Lady Randolph Churchill
John Steinbeck
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Born:
February 27, 1902
Died:
December 20, 1968
(aged 66)
Bio:
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories.
Known for:
Of Mice and Men (1937)
The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
East of Eden (1952)
Cannery Row (1945)
The Pearl (1947)
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