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John Steinbeck Quotes about Memories

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You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.

You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.

John Steinbeck
Memories, Home, Good Memories
John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.163, Penguin

And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

John Steinbeck
Memories, Years, People
John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.11, 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.

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

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.

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

I am sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It's small mining-- small mining. You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.

John Steinbeck
Memories, Fall, Men
John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.233, Penguin

I have no interest in the printed word. I would continue to write if there were no writing and no print. I put my words down for a matter of memory. They are more made to be spoken than to be read.

John Steinbeck
Memories, Writing, Printed Word

He never forgot anything but he never bothered to arrange his memories. -Hazel, Cannery Row

John Steinbeck
Memories, Bothered

Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life. While there remains even a plaintive memory, a person cannot be cut off, dead. And he thought, “It’s a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man’s life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.

John Steinbeck
Memories, Cutting, Men
John Steinbeck (1994). “Novels and Stories, 1932-1937”

Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.

John Steinbeck
Memories, Thinking, Long
John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.51, Penguin

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