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John Steinbeck Quotes - Page 11

All Quotes Ambition Art Business Challenges Chaos Character Children Choices Confusion Country Criticism Design Desire Doubt Dying Earth Effort Evil Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Freedom Friendship Giving Gold Greatness Greed Guilt Hate Hatred Heart Heaven Hell Home Honesty Horror House Hunger Hurt Inspirational Journey Joy Kindness Laughter Life Literature Loneliness Loss Love Luck Lying Magic Mathematics Memories Morning Mountain Nature Obsession Pain Past Philosophy Pleasure Prayer Pride Quality Rain Reading Reality Responsibility Running Sadness Science Sickness Sin Singing Sleep Socialism Son Sorrow Soul Struggle Suffering Summer Teaching Travel Understanding Waiting Wall War Water Wife Winning Winter Worry Writing

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

Powerful, Believe, Writing

The New York Times, June 02, 1969.

If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it-bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn't belong there.

Writing, Thinking, Goes On

A town is a thing like a colonial animal. A town has a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet. A town is a thing separate from all other towns alike. And a town has a whole emotion. How news travels through a town is a mystery not easily to be solved. News seems to move faster than small boys can scramble and dart to tell it, faster than women can call it over the fences.

Moving, Animal, Boys

John Steinbeck (2009). “The Short Novels of John Steinbeck: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.477, Penguin

When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.

Fall, Writing, Sick

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.17, Penguin

The misery stayed, not thought about but aching away, and sometimes I would have to ask myself, Why do I ache? Men can get used to anything, but it takes time.

Men, Misery, Sometimes

John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.125, Penguin

I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

Hate, Fighting, Mind

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.116, Penguin

How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise - the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream - be set down alive?

Dream, Light, Quality

John Steinbeck (1993). “Cannery Row”, p.8, Penguin

This is beyond understanding." said the king. "You are the wisest man alive. You know what is preparing. Why do you not make a plan to save yourself?" And Merlin said quietly, "Because I am wise. In the combat between wisdom and feeling, wisdom never wins.

Wise, Kings, Winning

John Steinbeck (2008). “The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.85, Penguin

A woman journalist in England asked me why Americans usually wrote about their childhood and a past that happened only in imagination, why they never wrote about the present. This bothered me until I realized why - that a novelist wants to know how it comes out, that he can't be omnipotent writing a book about the present, particularly this one.

Book, Writing, Past

John Steinbeck, Thomas Fensch (1988). “Conversations with John Steinbeck”, p.73, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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.

Writing, Sight, Mind

John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.8, Penguin

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.

Summer, Memories, Flower

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.9, Penguin

I’m in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love. And it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it.

Montana, Recognition, Admiration

And her joy was nearly like sorrow.

Joy, Sorrow

John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.59, Hamilton Books

I have taken as much as six years to prepare a book for writing. There is such a delirium of effort in the production of a book; it's like childbirth. And, like childbirth, one forgets the pains immediately so that when you come to write another one you dare to take it up again. Some precious anesthesia sees you through.

Pain, Book, Taken

John Steinbeck, Thomas Fensch (1988). “Conversations with John Steinbeck”, p.88, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Once Charley fell in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully.

Romance, Dachshunds, Ridiculous

John Steinbeck (2007). “Travels with Charley and Later Novels, 1947-1962”

And you know what it is? San Francisco a golden handcuff with the key thrown away.

Keys, San Francisco, Golden

"America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction".

The camera is one of the most frightening of modern weapons, particularly to people who have been in warfare, who have been bombed and shelled for at the back of a bombing run is invariably a photograph. In the back of ruined towns, and cities, and factories, there is aerial mapping, or spy mapping, usually with a camera. Therefore the camera is a feared instrument, and a man with a camera is suspected and watched wherever he goes... In the minds of most people today the camera is the forerunner of destruction, and it is suspected, and rightly so.

Running, Men, Cities

I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one.

Prayer, Magic, Suffering

John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.12, Penguin

Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there.

Guy, Cop

"Fictional character: Tom Joad". "The Grapes of Wrath ", www.imdb.com. 1940.

He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?

Reality, Men, Discovery

John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.46, Penguin

Everyone I have ever known very well has been concerned that I would eventually starve. Probably I shall. It isn't important enough to me to be an obsession.

Important, Obsession, Hunger

John Steinbeck (2001). “A Life in Letters”, p.79, Penguin UK

She wasn't happy, but then she wasn't unhappy. She wasn't anything. But I don't believe anyone is a nothing. There has to be something inside, if only to keep the skin from collapsing. This vacant eye, listless hand, this damask cheek dusted like a doughnut with plastic powder, had to have a memory or a dream.

Dream, Memories, Believe

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.29, Penguin

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

Travel, Struggle, Journey

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.8, Penguin

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.

Orange, Color, Gold

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.10, Penguin

For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.

Men, Two, Challenges

John Steinbeck (2009). “The Short Novels of John Steinbeck: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.429, Penguin

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