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John Steinbeck Quotes - Page 8

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

To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.

To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.

Honesty, Men, Soul

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.66, Penguin

The power of an attitude is amazing

Attitude

John Steinbeck (1966). “Travels with Charley”

We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.

Animal, Trying, Lonesome

The quality of owning freezes you forever in "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we.

Cutting, Wrath, Forever

John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.120, Hamilton Books

Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.

Hurt, Pride, Thinking

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.257, Penguin

Some men hunger so much for love that they lose everything that is loveable about them.

Men, Hunger, Loses

Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product I turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. Consequently criticism doesn't mean anything to me. As a disciplinary matter, it is too late.

Writing, Mean, Cutting

"John Steinbeck, The Art of Fiction No. 45". Interview with Nathaniel Benchley, www.theparisreview.org. Fall 1969.

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.

Kings, Hero, Writing

John Steinbeck (1990). “Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath”, p.21, Penguin

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.

Writing, Paper, Excuse

“Do you take pride in your hurt?” Samuel asked. “Does it make you seem large and tragic?” “I don't know.” “Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”

Hurt, Lying, Pride

"East of Eden".

We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God. Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world of all living things. The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. The test of his perfectibility is at hand. Having taken Godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.

God, Taken, Responsibility

John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.147, Penguin

We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.

Evil, Stories, Novel

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.325, Penguin

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

Beautiful, Love Is, Trying

When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.

Wise, Jobs, Children

Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it.

Believe, Brain, Trying

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

A writer lives in awe of words, for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.

Odor, Flavor, Kind

John Steinbeck (2001). “A Life in Letters”, p.729, Penguin UK

You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?

Ocean, Light, Dust

John Steinbeck (2008). “Sweet Thursday”, p.110, Penguin

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

Horse, Book, Writing

"The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights". Book by John Steinbeck, 1976.

I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.... The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

Believe, Eggs, Eden

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.66, Penguin

The lies we tell about our duty and our purposes, the meaningless words of science and philosophy, are walls that topple before a bewildered little ‘why’.

Wall, Philosophy, Lying

John Steinbeck (1995). “The Log from the Sea of Cortez”, p.174, Penguin

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.

Dream, Light, California

John Steinbeck (2002). “Cannery Row: (Centennial Edition)”, p.9, Penguin

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.

Mother, Children, Parenting

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.132, Penguin

I've lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.

Life, Weather, Climate

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.24, Penguin

The craft of writing is the art of penetrating other minds with the figures that are in your own mind.

Art, Writing, Mind

John Steinbeck, Thomas Fensch (1988). “Conversations with John Steinbeck”, p.44, Univ. Press of Mississippi

A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory

Past, Greatness, People

John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.318, Penguin

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