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John Steinbeck Quotes about Past

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You know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.

You know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.

John Steinbeck
Past, People, Three
John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.159, Penguin

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

John Steinbeck
Past, Wrath, Knows
John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.70, Hamilton Books

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

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

A creative person has to be alive. He can't borrow from things he's done in the past. He can't let his method choose his subjects or his characters. They can't be warped to fit his style.

John Steinbeck
Writing, Character, Past

And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.

John Steinbeck
Prayer, Men, Past
John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.29, Hamilton Books

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.

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

They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)

John Steinbeck
Dark, Past, Deserving It
John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.143, Penguin

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