John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

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If you're in trouble or hurt or need, go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help, the only ones.

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
This you may say of man - when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.

John Steinbeck
The literature of science is filled with answers found when the question propounded had an entirely different direction and end.

John Steinbeck
You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff.

John Steinbeck
It is a nice thing to be working and believing in my work again. I hope I can keep the drive. I only feel whole and well when it is this way.

John Steinbeck
The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size.

John Steinbeck
Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

John Steinbeck
Yes, you should talk," he said. "Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth.

John Steinbeck
Ever'body's askin' that. "What we comin' to?" Seems to me we don't never come to nothin'. Always on the way.

John Steinbeck
It was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.

John Steinbeck
And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.

John Steinbeck
In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

John Steinbeck
Fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live – for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken... fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

John Steinbeck
Why, Tom - us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people - we go on.' 'We take a beatin' all the time.' 'I know.' Ma chuckled. 'Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good, an' they die out. But, Tom, we keep a-comin'. Don' you fret none, Tom. A different time's comin'.

John Steinbeck
The clouds appeared and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore.

John Steinbeck
The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.

John Steinbeck
The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line.

John Steinbeck
Fella in business got to lie an' cheat, but he calls it somepin else. That's what's important. You go steal that tire an' you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business.

John Steinbeck
Best thing is to get the words down every day. And it is time to start now.

John Steinbeck
In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration.

John Steinbeck
I wrote The Grapes of Wrath in one hundred days, but many years of preparation preceded it.

John Steinbeck
The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.

John Steinbeck
There is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him.

John Steinbeck
Trips to fairly unknown regions should be made twice; once to make mistakes and once to correct them.

John Steinbeck
Just set one day's work in front of the last day's work. That's the way it comes out. And that's the only way it does.

John Steinbeck
To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.

John Steinbeck
There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say.

John Steinbeck
If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.

John Steinbeck
The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads.

John Steinbeck