Quotes by John Steinbeck

And I here make a rule-a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting-only the deeply personal and familiar.

Pilon complained, It is not a good story. There are too many meanings and too many lessons in it. Some of those lessons are opposite. There is not a story to take into your head. It proves nothing.I like it said Pablo. I like it because it hasnt any meaning you can see, and still it does seem to mean something, I cant tell what.

Ma raised her eyes to the girls face. Mas eyes were patient, but the lines of strain were on her forehead. Ma fanned and fanned the air, and her piece of cardboard warned off the flies. When youre young, Rosasharn, everthing that happens is a thing all by itself. Its a lonely thing. I know, i member, Rosasharn. Her mouth loved the name of her daughter. Youre gonna have a baby, Rosasharn, and thats somepin to you lonely and away. Thats gonna hurt you, an the hurtll be lonely hurt, an this here tent is alone in the worl, Rosasharn. She whipped the air for a moment to drive a buzzing blow fly on, and the big shining fly circled the tent twice and zoomed out into the blinding sunlight. And Ma went on, Theys a time of change, an when that comes, dyin is a piece of dyin, and bearin is a piece of bearin, an bearin an dyin is two pieces of the same thing. An then things aint so lonely any more. An then a hurt dont hurt so bad, cause it aint a lonely hurt no more, Rosasharn. I wisht I could tell you so youd know, but I cant. And her voice was so soft, so full of love, that tears crowded into Rose of Sharons eyes, and flowed over her eyes and blinded her.

The Pacific is my home ocean; I knew it first, grew up on its shore, collected marine animals along the coast. I know its moods, its color, its nature.

The Pacific is my home ocean; I knew it first, grew up on its shore, collected marine animals along the coast. I know its moods, its color, its nature. It was very far inland that I caught the first smell of the Pacific. When one has been long at sea, the smell of land reaches far out to greet one. And the same it true when one has been long inland.

I seen hundreds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads . . . every damn one of ’em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never a God damn one of ’em ever gets it. 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.

...and it is generally understood that a party hardly ever goes the way it is planned or intended. This last, of course, excludes, those dismal slave parties, whipped and controlled and dominated, given by an ogreish professional hostess. These are not parties at all but acts and demonstrations, about as spontaneous as peristalsis and as interesting as its end product.

Seems to me you put too much stock in the affairs of children. It probably didnt mean anything. Yes, it meant something. Mr. Trask, do you think the thoughts of people suddenly become important at a given age? Do you have sharper feelings or clearer thoughts now than when you were ten? Do you see as well, hear as well, taste as vitally?

But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. Theres no godliness there.

Aint you thinkin whats it gonna be like when we get there? Aint you scared it wont be nice like we thought?No, she said quickly. No, I aint. You cant do that. I cant do that. Its too much - livin too many lives. Up ahead theys a thousan lives we might live, but when it comes, itll ony be one.

The story was gradually taking shape. Pilon liked it this way. It ruined a story to have it all come out quickly. The good story lay in half-told things which must be filled in out of the hearers own experience.

I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar - if he is financially fortunate.

A man who writes a story is forced to put into it the best of his knowledge and the best of his feeling. The discipline of the written word punishes stupidity and dishonesty. 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.

We still go where we want, even if we got to crawl for the right. - Tom Joad (Jr.)

Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, and their responsibilities have been decreed by our species... the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate mans proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit - for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and esthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars. With the Model T, part of the concept of private property disappeared. Pliers ceased to be privately owned and a tire pump belonged to the last man who had picked it up. Most of the babies of the period were conceived in Model T Fords and not a few were born in them. The theory of the Anglo Saxon home became so warped that it never quite recovered.

Not long ago, after my last trip to Russia, I had a conversation with an American very eminent in the field of politics. I asked what he read, and he replied that he studied history, sociology, politics and law. How about fiction - novels, plays poetry? I asked.No, he said, I have never had time for them. Theres so much else I have to read.I said, Sir, I have recently visited Russia for the third time and dont know how well I understand Russians; but I do know that if I only read Russian history I could not have had the access to Russian thinking I have had from reading Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin, Turgenev, Sholokhov, and Ehrenburg. History only recounts, with some inaccuracy, what they did. The fiction tells, or tries to tell, why they did it and what they felt and were like when they did it. My friend nodded gravely. I hadnt though of that, he said. Yes, that might be so; I had always thought of fiction as opposed to fact. But in considering the American past, how poor we would be in information without Huckleberry Fin, An American Tragedy, Winesburg, Ohio, Main Street, The Great Gatsby, and As I Lay Dying.

American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash -- all of them -- surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered with rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if no other way, we can see the wild an reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index. Driving along I thought how in France or Italy every item of these thrown-out things would have been saved and used for something. This is not said in criticism of one system or the other but I do wonder whether there will come a time when we can no longer afford our wastefulness -- chemical wastes in the rivers, metal wastes everywhere, and atomic wastes buried deep in the earth or sunk in the sea. When an Indian village became too deep in its own filth, the inhabitants moved. And we have no place to which to move.

But it isnt hunger that drives millions of armed American Males to forests and hills every autumn, as the high incidence of heart failure among the hunters will prove. Somehow the hunting process has to do with masculinity, but I dont quite know how.

It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well correspond to the thickening armor of the great reptiles—a tendency that can end only in extinction. If this should happen to be true, nothing stemming from thought can interfere with it or bend it. Conscious thought seems to have little effect on the action or direction of our species.