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John Steinbeck Quotes - Page 4

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

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

Men, Literature, Being The Best

John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.64, Penguin

To finish is sadness to a writer — a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.

Inspiring, Writing, Sadness

"Steinbeck: A Life in Letters".

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.

Reading, Home, Men

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

We can shoot rockets into space but we can't cure anger or discontent.

Space, Rockets, Cures

John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.151, Penguin

I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.

Progress, Looks, Wonder

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.102, Penguin

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

Inspiration, Writing, Stronger

John Steinbeck (1990). “Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath”, p.118, Penguin

Time is the only critic without ambition.

Time, Ambition, Judgment

"Writers at Work, Fourth Series (On Critics)". Book edited by George Plimpton, 1977.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

Inspirational, Wisdom, Couple

John Steinbeck, Thomas Fensch (1988). “Conversations with John Steinbeck”, p.124, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

Change, Men, Wind

John Steinbeck (2008). “Sweet Thursday”, p.57, Penguin

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.

Revenge, Thinking, Rejection

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.237, Penguin

I nearly always write — just as I nearly always breathe.

Writing, Breathe

"Steinbeck: A Life in Letters".

Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

Teacher, Art, Teaching

John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.123, Penguin

People like you to be something, preferably what they are.

People, Like You, East Of Eden

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.234, Penguin

And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.

Women, Equality, Circus

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.26, Penguin

The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.

Eye, Color, Silence

I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.

War, Reality, Romance

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.77, Penguin

Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.

Bragging, Gloating, Brag

Sometimes when she was alone, and she knew she was alone, she permitted her mind to play in a garden, and she smiled.

Garden, Play, Mind

John Steinbeck (2001). “Novels, 1942-1952”

One pays for everything, the trick is not to pay too much of anything for anything.

Pay, Too Much, Tricks

I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton woool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it's such a sweet trap.

Spiritual, Sweet, Passion

American married life is the doormat to the whorehouse.

Marriage, Married, Life Is

An answer is invariably the parent of a whole family of new questions.

Parent, Answers, Whole Family

I know three things will never be believed - the true, the probable, and the logical

Three, Three Things, Logical

John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.56, Penguin

There's nothing in the world like that first taste of beer.

Beer, Taste, Firsts

"The Short Novels of John Steinbeck".

Maybe ever'body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.

Loneliness, People, World

John Steinbeck (2013). “Of Mice and Men: Teacher's Deluxe Edition”, p.38, Penguin

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