John Steinbeck - East of Eden (1952)

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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
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
But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.

John Steinbeck
And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, "Use it well, use it wisely.

John Steinbeck
But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe.

John Steinbeck
Give me a used Bible and I will, I think, be able to tell you about a man by the places that are edged with the dirt of seeking fingers.

John Steinbeck
Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.

John Steinbeck
These too are of a burning color—not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were liquid and could raise a cream, that golden cream might be like the color of the poppies.

John Steinbeck
A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then-the glory-so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished.

John Steinbeck
Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life - so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we do.

John Steinbeck
No gift will ever buy back a man's love when you have removed his self-love.

John Steinbeck
We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.

John Steinbeck
When you're a child you're the center of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They're only ghosts furnished for you to talk to.

John Steinbeck
What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.

John Steinbeck
It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

John Steinbeck
Riches seem to come to the poor in spirit, the poor in interest and joy. To put it straight, the very rich are a poor bunch of bastards.

John Steinbeck
When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.

John Steinbeck
You're getting well,' Samuel said. 'Some people think it's an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well. But the time poultice is no respecter of glories. Everyone gets well if he waits around.

John Steinbeck
The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in lots of people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does.

John Steinbeck
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.

John Steinbeck
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
No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.

John Steinbeck
That's why I'm talking to you. You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.

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

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
It's one of the great fallacies, it seems to me, that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to man.

John Steinbeck
Hate cannot live alone. It must have love as a trigger, a goad, or a stimulant.

John Steinbeck