Top 100 Steinbeck's Quotes
#1. 'Of Mice and Men,' Steinbeck's fifth novel, adheres to a simple dramatic structure, which observes the classic Aristotelian unities of time, place and action.
Jay Parini
#2. Steinbeck's commitment to discipline isn't mere moral vanity or fetishism of productivity - his is an earnest yearning to create the greatest work of his life,
Anonymous
#3. I wish wish I could steal the intricacies of language. But give my kids a break - remember, most of them were fed on Steinbeck's The Pearl.
Azar Nafisi
#4. One of my favorite things I read was John Steinbeck's journals while he was writing 'East of Eden,' which was so cool.
Paul Dano
#5. For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost- good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word.
John Steinbeck
#6. I don't think they's luck or bad luck. On'y one thing in this worl' I'm sure of, an' that's I'm sure nobody got a right to mess with a fella's life. He got to do it all hisself. Help him, maybe, but not tell him what to do.
John Steinbeck
#7. I don't think I've ever known what you people call happiness. We think of contentment as the desirable thing, and maybe that's negative.
John Steinbeck
#8. It's hard to split a man down the middle and always to reach for the same half.
John Steinbeck
#9. When you know a friend is there you do not go to see him. Then he's gone and you blast your conscience to shreds that you did not see him.
John Steinbeck
#10. This all came of a conversation I had with [John] Steinbeck once when we were standing in a men's room somewhere. Steinbeck asked me why I didn't play the banjo any more and I told him that went out with the high-button shoes.
Eddie Condon
#11. But it's our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it's no good, it's still ours. That's what makes it ours- being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.
John Steinbeck
#12. The preacher said, "She looks tar'd.' "Women's always tar'd,' said Tom. "That's just the way women is, 'cept at meetin' once an' again.
John Steinbeck
#13. Don't you dare take the lazy way. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't let me catch you doing it! Now
look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do.
John Steinbeck
#14. Think you've got knocker fever. Come in to the inn tonight and get it cured up." "Maybe that's it," said Adam. "But I never took much satisfaction in a whore." "It's all the same," Charles said. "You shut your eyes and you can't tell the difference.
John Steinbeck
#15. It's almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.
John Steinbeck
#16. I know this - a man got to do what he got to do, I can't tell you. I don't think they's luck or bad luck. On'y one thing in the worl' I'm sure of, an' that's I'm sure nobody got a right to mess with a fella's life. He got to do it all hisself, Help im, maybe, but not tell him what to do.
John Steinbeck
#17. It's a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.
John Steinbeck
#18. Tom's cowardice was as huge as his courage, as it must be in great men.
John Steinbeck
#19. Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.
John Steinbeck
#20. Tom said, "Let me beg you never to tell that story to Will. He'd have you locked up." "But the house wasn't worth what I asked!" "I repeat what I said about Will. What's Adam want with your house?" "He's going to move there. Wants the twins to go to school in Salinas." "What'll
John Steinbeck
#21. I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's
why.
John Steinbeck
#22. There's a capacity for appetite ... that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfy
John Steinbeck
#23. Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.
John Steinbeck
#24. Ever'body's askin' that. "What we comin' to?" Seems to me we don't never come to nothin'. Always on the way.
John Steinbeck
#25. When I was a kid my ol' man give me a haltered heifer an' says take her down an git her serviced. An' the fella says, I done it, an' ever' time since then when I hear a business man talkin' about service, I wonder who's gettin' screwed.
John Steinbeck
#26. [Cannery Row's] inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,' by which he meant everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing.
John Steinbeck
#27. Dessie's friends were good and loyal but they were human, and humans love to feel good and they hate to feel bad.
John Steinbeck
#28. You what. Curley's like a lot of little guys. He hates big guys. He's alla time picking scraps with big guys. Kind of like he's mad at 'em because he ain't a big guy. You seen little guys like that, ain't you? Always scrappy?
John Steinbeck
#29. And Ma smiled sadly, He is. Tommy's growed way up - way up so I can't get aholt of 'im sometimes.
John Steinbeck
#30. This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don' know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters.
John Steinbeck
#31. It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.
John Steinbeck
#33. Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life - so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we do.
John Steinbeck
#34. 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
#35. If on'y they didn' tell me I got to get off, why, I'd prob'y be in California right now a-eatin' grapes an a-pickin' an orange when I wanted. But them sons-a-bitches says I got to get off-an', Jesus Christ, a man can't, when he's tol' to!
John Steinbeck
#36. There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.
John Steinbeck
#37. Give a little party," she insisted. "Just a small affair. Nobody will dress. It's the anniversary of the founding of the Bloomer League - you didn't even remember that." "It's no use," said Tom.
John Steinbeck
#38. The preacher laughed softly. "You know," he said, "it's a nice thing not bein' a preacher no more. Nobody use' ta tell stories when I was there, or if they did I couldn' laugh. An' I couldn' cuss. Now I cuss all I want, any time I want, an' it does a fella good to cuss if he wants to.
John Steinbeck
#39. Once when I felt a little bruised by censorship I sent through Herodotus's account of the battle of Salamis fought between the Greeks and Persians in 480 B.C., and since there were place names involved, albeit classical ones, the Navy censors killed the whole story.
John Steinbeck
#40. No - the stars are close and dear and I have joined the brotherhood of the worlds. And everything's holy - everything, even me.
John Steinbeck
#41. Some people think it's an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well.
John Steinbeck
#42. 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.
John Steinbeck
#43. And, as with all retold tales that are in people's hearts, there are only good and bad things and black and white things and good and evil things and no in between anywhere.
John Steinbeck
#44. I guess she's just nuts,' he said. 'And if she's nuts, a guy's got to do nuts things. You don't think you could say the hell with her?
John Steinbeck
#45. I started writing serious books so late because I knew I'd be accused of riding on my father's coattails.
Thomas Steinbeck
#46. Failure is a state of mind. It's like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.
John Steinbeck
#47. She gathered some brown seaweed and made a flat damp poultice of it, and this she applied to the baby's swollen shoulder, which was as good a remedy as any and probably better than the doctor could have done. But the remedy lacked his authority because it was simple and didn't cost anything.
John Steinbeck
#48. Lennie begged, "Le's do it now. Le's get that place now." "Sure right now. I gotta. We gotta.
John Steinbeck
#49. I do love her, and that's odd because she is everything I detest in anyone else.
John Steinbeck
#50. You can boast about anything if it's all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.
John Steinbeck
#51. Just set one day's work in front of the last day's work. That's the way it comes out. And that's the only way it does.
John Steinbeck
#52. If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.
John Steinbeck
#53. It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary
John Steinbeck
#54. I was a nut for Dostoevsky. You can tell a lot from what people read between those ages. My brother was a Steinbeck freak and now he lives in a little village in New Hampshire and he's a baker.
Vincent Kartheiser
#55. Casy gathered in his canvas sneakers and shoved his bare feet into them. "I ain't got your confidence," he said. "I'm always scared there's wire or glass under the dust. I don't know nothin' I hate so much as a cut toe.
John Steinbeck
#56. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say - and to feel - Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought.
John Steinbeck
#57. It is strange how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place. Everyone must have one, although I never heard a man tell of it.
John Steinbeck
#58. When you're huntin' somepin you're a hunter, an' you're strong. Can't nobody beat a hunter. But when you get hunted - that's different. Somepin happens to you. You ain't strong: maybe you're fierce, but you ain't strong. - Muley
John Steinbeck
#59. I don't mind getting smacked on the chin. I just don't want to get nibbled to death. There's a difference.
John Steinbeck
#60. Why don't you go on west to California? There's work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange. Why, there's always some kind of crop to work in. Why don't you go there?
John Steinbeck
#61. Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.
John Steinbeck
#62. Vonnegut is one of America's basic artists, a true and worthy heir to the grand tradition of Thoreau, Whitman, Twain, Dreiser, Traven, Tom Wolfe (the real Tom Wolfe, I mean) and Steinbeck. In other words, he writes out of a concern for justice, love, honesty, and hope.
Edward Abbey
#63. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry.
John Steinbeck
#64. Just like heaven. Ever'body wants a little piece of lan'. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It's just in their head. They're all the time talkin' about it, but it's jus' in their head.
John Steinbeck
#66. There are times that one treasures for all one's life, and such times are burned clearly and sharply on the material of total recall. I felt very fortunate that morning.
John Steinbeck
#67. Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.
John Steinbeck
#68. Even if teen-age children aren't making a sound, it's quieter when they're gone. They put a boiling in the air around them. As they left, the whole house seemed to sigh and settle. No wonder poltergeists infest only houses with adolescent children. The
John Steinbeck
#69. Unless a writer's capable of solitude, he should leave books alone and go into the theater.
John Steinbeck
#70. All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.
John Steinbeck
#71. Yeah," said George. "I'll come. But listen, Curley. The poor bastard's nuts. Don't shoot 'im. He di'n't know what he was doin'.
John Steinbeck
#72. Whenever they's a fight so hungry hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beating up a guy, I'll be there.
John Steinbeck
#73. My father believed, like Pericles, that a man's genius could be easily judged by the number of unenlightened fools set in phalanx against his ideas.
Thomas Steinbeck
#74. And when a man's feelings are hurt he wants to strike at something, and Abel was in the way of his anger.
John Steinbeck
#77. They's scandalous things goes on in this here camp,' she said darkly. Ever' Sat'dy night they's dancin', an' not only squar' dancin', neither. They's some does clutch-an'-hug dancin'! I seen 'em.
John Steinbeck
#78. It's like me, I wouldn' take the good ol' gospel that was just layin' there to my hand. I got to be pickin' at it until I got it all tore down.
John Steinbeck
#79. There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.
John Steinbeck
#80. I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.
John Steinbeck
#81. Before I knowed it, I was saying out loud, 'The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say.
John Steinbeck
#82. We're sorry. It's not us. It's the monster. The bank isn't a man. The bank isn't like a man.
Yes, but the bank is only made of men.
John Steinbeck
#83. There's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.
John Steinbeck
#84. I've given you everything a friend can give, Joe Saul-even contempt, and that's the hardest thing of all.
John Steinbeck
#85. Adam's mother ran the farm, bore Adam, and still had time to embrace a primitive theosophy. She felt that her husband would surely be killed by the wild and barbarous rebels, and she prepared herself to get in touch with him in what she called the beyond.
John Steinbeck
#86. It set him free," said Lee. "It gave him the right to be a man, separate from every other man."
"That's lonely."
"All great and precious things are lonely."
"What is the word again?"
"Timshel - thou mayest.
John Steinbeck
#87. Not this one." Adam's eyes were shining. "You don't know this Eve. She'll celebrate my choice. I don't think anyone can know her goodness.
John Steinbeck
#88. It's one of the great fallacies, it seems to me, that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to man.
John Steinbeck
#89. I was eighteen when I first read Joseph Heller's stunning work 'Catch-22,' and was at that time close to being drafted for the fruitless and unenlightened war in Viet Nam.
Thomas Steinbeck
#90. The other night I discovered that 50 feet from our house,through a break in the trees, you can see St Michael's Tor at Glastonbury ... There is no question that there is magic here and all kinds of magic. (Bruton 1959)
John Steinbeck
#91. 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.
John Steinbeck
#92. They's a time of change, an' when that comes, dyin' is a piece of all dyin', and bearin' is a piece of all bearin', an' bearin' an' dyin' is two pieces of the same thing. An' then things ain't so lonely anymore. An' then a hurt don't hurt so bad.
John Steinbeck
#93. Casy said solemnly, This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don't know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters. An' now his dead, an' that don't matter ...
John Steinbeck
#94. I am writing this from what we Americans call Yurrp. In Yurrp writers are taken as seriously as Lana Turner's legs are in America - a ridiculous situation.
John Steinbeck
#95. Help him, Adam
help him. Give him his chance. Let him be free. That's all a man has over the beasts. Free him! Bless him!
John Steinbeck
#96. If you are in love-that's a good thing-that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone.
John Steinbeck
#97. Any man of reasonable intelligence can make money if that's what he wants. Mostly it's women or clothes or admiration he really wants and they deflect him.
John Steinbeck
#98. Maybe there ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue, they's just what people does. Some things folks do is nice and some ain't so nice, and that's all any man's got a right to say.
John Steinbeck
#99. Someone's got to do these things,' he said sullenly. 'Or else fate would not ever get nose-thumbed and mankind would still be clinging to the top branches of a tree.
John Steinbeck
#100. There's no money in that," said Will. "Farmers don't make any money. It's the man who buys from him and sells. You'll never make any money farming." Will knew that Cal was feeling him, testing him, observing him, and he approved of that.
John Steinbeck
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