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John Steinbeck -
East of Eden (1952)
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Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.
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 think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody.
John Steinbeck
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There is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter.
John Steinbeck
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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
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But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist-or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.
John Steinbeck
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I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.... The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?
John Steinbeck
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You must not expect to find that people understand what they do.
John Steinbeck
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Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels. They gathered mountains and valleys, rivers and whole horizons, the way a man might now gain tittle to building lots.
John Steinbeck
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The medical profession is unconsciously irritated by lay knowledge.
John Steinbeck
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It must be a hard thing to kill a man you don't know and don't hate.
John Steinbeck
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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
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Hate cannot live alone. It must have love as a trigger, a goad, or a stimulant.
John Steinbeck
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The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.
John Steinbeck
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And Tom brought him chicken soup until he wanted to kill him. The lore has not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either.
John Steinbeck
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A man is a very important thing-maybe more important than a star.
John Steinbeck
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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
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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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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
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It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.
John Steinbeck
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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
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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
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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
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Liza poured thick batter from a pitcher onto a soapstone griddle. The hot cakes rose like little hassocks, and small volcanoes formed and erupted on them until they were ready to be turned. A cheerful brown, they were, with tracings of darker brown. And the kitchen was full of the good sweet smell of them.
John Steinbeck
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Quote of the day
Destiny is the invention of the cowardly, and the resigned.
Ignazio Silone
John Steinbeck
Creative Commons
Born:
February 27, 1902
Died:
December 20, 1968
(aged 66)
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