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John Steinbeck -
East of Eden (1952)
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No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.
John Steinbeck
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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
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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
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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
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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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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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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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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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Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.
John Steinbeck
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It doesn't matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can't understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water?
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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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
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I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.
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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A man is a very important thing-maybe more important than a star.
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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The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.
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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Quote of the day
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Lady Randolph Churchill
John Steinbeck
Creative Commons
Born:
February 27, 1902
Died:
December 20, 1968
(aged 66)
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