John Steinbeck - People Quotes

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Some days are born ugly. From the very first light they are no damn good what ever the weather, and everbody knows it. No one knows what causes this, but on such a day people resist getting out of bed and set their heels against the day. When they are finally forced out by hunger or job they find that the day is just as lousy as they knew it would be.

John Steinbeck
People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.

John Steinbeck
For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.

John Steinbeck
I have wondered why is it that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death that others.

John Steinbeck
They's movement now. People moving. We know why, an' we know how. Movin' 'cause they got to. That's why folks always move. Movin' 'cause they want somepin better'n what they got. An' that's the on'y way they'll ever git it.

John Steinbeck
The theater is the only institution in the world which has been dying for four thousand years and has never succumbed. It requires tough and devoted people to keep it alive.

John Steinbeck
Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'—I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry n' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build—why, I'll be there.

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
People are felt rather than seen after the first few moments...

John Steinbeck
The people in flight from the terror behind-strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.

John Steinbeck
Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.

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

John Steinbeck
As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.

John Steinbeck
I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.

John Steinbeck
There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen.

John Steinbeck
The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.

John Steinbeck
People like you to be something, preferably what they are.

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
They successfully combined piracy and puritanism, which aren't so unlike when you come right down to it. Both had a strong dislike for opposition and both had a roving eye for other people's property.

John Steinbeck
And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.

John Steinbeck
And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

John Steinbeck
I know now why confusion in government is not only tolerated but encouraged. I have learned. A confused people can make no clear demands.

John Steinbeck
The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side.

John Steinbeck
He learned that when people are very poor they still have something to give and the impulse to give it.

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
I know people who are so immersed in road maps that they never see the countryside they pass through, and others who, having traced a route, are held to it as though held by flanged wheels to rails.

John Steinbeck
This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from "I" to "we". If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I", and cuts you off forever from the "we".

John Steinbeck
For a while I was a vicious fighter but it wasn't to win. It was to get it over and get the hell out of there. And I never would have done it at all if other people hadn't put me in the ring. The only private fights I ever had were those I couldn't get away from.

John Steinbeck
Don't ever ask directions of a Maine native, I was told.
Why ever not?
Somehow we think it is funny to misdirect people and we don't smile when we do it, but we laugh inwardly. It is our nature.

John Steinbeck
When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked.... In other words, I don't improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.

John Steinbeck