John Steinbeck - Kind Quotes

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They must be real people. And this means that every word in every line of speech must be accurate and full of some kind of meaning which stretches not only forward in the book but stems from before in the book.

John Steinbeck
I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt- and there is the story of mankind.

John Steinbeck
A funeral isn't for the dead. You'll simply be a stage set for a kind of festival maybe. And besides, you won't even be there.

John Steinbeck
I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton woool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it's such a sweet trap.

John Steinbeck
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.

John Steinbeck
When a hypothesis is deeply accepted it becomes a growth which only a kind of surgery can amputate.

John Steinbeck
I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody.

John Steinbeck
A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive.

John Steinbeck
I'm back with my own kind of people here now, the bums and drinkers and no goods and it is a fine thing.

John Steinbeck
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.

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
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
There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.

John Steinbeck
Maybe that's the reason," Adam said slowly, feeling his way. "Maybe if I had loved him I would have been jealous of him. You were. Maybe-maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure-never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself? I can see it pretty clearly. I can see how you loved him and what it did to you. I did not love him. Maybe he loved me. He tested me and hurt me and punished me and finally he sent me out like a sacrifice, maybe to make up for something. But he did not love you, and so he had faith in you. Maybe — why, maybe it's a kind of reverse.

John Steinbeck
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 were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.

John Steinbeck
In every bit of honest writing in the world … there is a base theme. 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 nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. there is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.

John Steinbeck
Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.

John Steinbeck
What the hell kind of bed you giving us, anyways. We don't want no pants rabbits.

John Steinbeck
What some people find in religion a writer may find in his craft...a kind of breaking through to glory.

John Steinbeck
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 I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby.

John Steinbeck
In business and in politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind-but he must get there first.

John Steinbeck
I guess a man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, and then steps in it.

John Steinbeck
Man is the only kind of varmint who sets his own trap, baits it, then steps on it.

John Steinbeck