John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

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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
That man who is more then his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis.

John Steinbeck
Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby those fruits may be eaten.

John Steinbeck
Fella says today, 'Depression is over. I seen a jackrabbit, an' they wasn't nobody after him.' An' another fella says, 'That aint the reason. Can't afford to kill jackrabbits no more. Catch 'em and milk 'em an' turn 'em loose. One you seen prob'ly gone dry.

John Steinbeck
Okie use' ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you're a dirty son-of-a-bitch. Okie means you're scum. Don't mean nothing itself, it's the way they say it.

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
You're buying years of work, toil in the sun; you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.

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

John Steinbeck
He drank too much when he could get it, ate too much when it was there, talked too much all the time.

John Steinbeck
But you can't start. Only a baby can start. You and me - why, we're all that's been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that's us. This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can't start again.

John Steinbeck
How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him—he has known a fear beyond every other.

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'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
Boileau said that Kings, Gods and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren't very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor … And since our race admires gallantry, the writer will deal with it where he finds it. He finds it in the struggling poor now.

John Steinbeck
How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?

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 the first time I am working on a book that is not limited and that will take every bit of experience and thought and feeling that I have.

John Steinbeck
Prayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork.

John Steinbeck
And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history; repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.

John Steinbeck
You stay out here a little while, an' if you smell any roses, you come let me smell, too.

John Steinbeck
When you're huntin' somepin you're a hunter, an' you're strong. Can't nobody beat a hunter. But when you get hunted - that's different. Somepin happens to you. You ain't strong: maybe you're fierce, but you ain't strong." - Muley

John Steinbeck