Quotes by John Steinbeck

It is easy, out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, I couldnt help it; the way was set. But think of the glory of the choice!

Olive was way beyond hearing anything, but her chin was set and she was determined to help the pilot so that he would not be too afraid before they hit the earth. She smiled and nodded again. At the end of each stunt he looked back, and each time she encouraged him. Afterward he said over and over, Shes the goddamest woman I ever saw. I tore up the rule book and she wanted more. Good Christ, what a pilot she would have made!

How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)

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 childs world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.

The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It cant wait. Itll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It cant stay one size.

Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank - or the Company - needs - wants - insists - must have - as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. Youve scrabbled at it long enough, God knows.

Funny thing how it is. If a man owns a little property, that property is him, its part of him, and its like him. If he owns property only so he can walk on it and handle it and be sad when it isnt doing well, and feel fine when the rain falls on it, that property is him, and some way hes bigger because he owns it. Even if he isnt successful hes big with his property. That is so.But let a man get property he doesnt see, or cant take time to get his fingers in, or cant be there to walk on it - why, then the property is the man. He cant do what he wants, he cant think what he wants. The property is the man, stronger than he is. And he is small, not big. Only his possessions are big - and hes the servant of his property. That is so, too.

And the great owners, who had become through the might of their holdings both more and less than men

Were sorry. Its not us. Its the monster. The bank isnt a man. The bank isnt like a man.Yes, but the bank is only made of men.

I wanta buy stuff. Stuff I dont need... Stuff settin out there, you jus feel like buyin it whether you need it or not.-Uncle John

You fellas don know what youre doin. Youre helpin to starve kids...You don know what youre a doin.

Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here I lost my land is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate--We lost *our* land.

Look now -- in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, use it well, use it wisely. We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training.

Morning seems to come earlier every year I live.

At last he said, Did you come out of the big mountains?Gitano shook his head slowly. No, I walked down the Salinas Valley.The afternoon thought would not let Joey go. Did you ever go into the big mountains back there?The old dark eyes grew fixed, and their light turned inward on the years that were living in Gitanos head.

It is very easy to grow tired at collecting; the period of a low tide is about all men can endure. At first the rocks are bright and every moving animal makes his mark on the attention. The picture is wide and colored and beautiful. But after an hour and a half the attention centers weary, the color fades, and the field is likely to narrow to an individual animal. Here one may observe his own world narrowed down until interest and, with it, observation, flicker and go out. And what if with age this weariness becomes permanent and observation dim out and not recover? Can this be what happens to so many men of science? Enthusiasm, interest, sharpness, dulled with a weariness until finally they retire into easy didacticism? With this weariness, this stultification of attention centers, perhaps there comes the pained and sad memory of what the old excitement was like, and regret might turn to envy of the men who still have it. Then out of the shell of didacticism, such a used-up man might attack the unwearied, and he would have in his hands proper weapons of attack. It does seem certain that to a wearied man an error in a mass of correct data wipes out all the correctness and is a focus for attack; whereas the unwearied man, in his energy and receptivity, might consider the little dross of error a by-product of his effort. These two may balance and produce a purer thing than either in the end. These two may be the stresses which hold up the structure, but it is a sad thing to see the interest in interested men thin out and weaken and die. We have known so many professors who once carried their listeners high on their single enthusiasm, and have seen these same men finally settle back comfortably into lectures prepared years before and never vary them again. Perhaps this is the same narrowing we observe in relation to ourselves and the tide pool—a man looking at reality brings his own limitations to the world. If he has strength and energy of mind the tide pool stretches both ways, digs back to electrons and leaps space into the universe and fights out of the moment into non-conceptual time. Then ecology has a synonym which is ALL.

Now Pilon knew it for a perfect night. A high fog covered the sky, and behind it, the moon shone so so that the forest was filled with a gauze-like light. There was none of the sharp outline we think of as reality. The tree trunks were not black columns of wood, but soft and unsubstantial shadows. The patches of brush were formless and shifting in the queer light. Ghosts could walk freely to-night, without fear of the disbelif of men; for this night was haunted, and it would be an insensitive man who did not know it.

I always found in myself a dread of west and love of east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back from the ridges of the Santa Lucias. It may be that the birth and death of the day had some part in my feeling about the two ranges of mountains.

And dont worry about losing. If i is right, it happens - the main thing is not to hurry.Nothing good gets away.

For how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.