Quotes by John Steinbeck

I wonder Pa went so easy. I wonder Grampa didn kill nobody. Nobody never tol Grampa where to put his feet. An Ma aint nobody you can push aroun neither. I seen her beat the hell out of a tin peddler with a live chicken one time cause he give her a argument. She had the chicken in one han, an the ax in the other, about to cut its head off. She aimed to go for that peddler with the ax, but she forgot which hand was which, an she takes after him with the chicken. Couldn even eat that chicken when she got done. They wasnt nothing but a pair of legs in her han. Grampa throwed his hip outa joint laughin.

Minds me of a story they tell about Willy Feeley when he was a young fella. Willy was bashful, awful bashful. Well, one day he takes a heifer over to Graves bull. Everbody was out but Elsie Graves, and Elsie wasnt bashful at all. Willy, he stood there turnin red an he couldnt even talk. Elsie says, I know what you come for; the bulls out in back a the barn. Well, they took the heifer out there an Willy an Elsie sat on the fence to watch. Purty soon Willy got feelin purty fly. Elsie looks over an says, like she dont know, Whats a matter, Willy? Willys so randy, he cant hardly set still. By God, he says, by God, I wisht I was a-doin that! Elsie says, Why not, WIlly? Its your heifer.

Old Tom giggled, Fooled ya, huh, Ma? We aimed to fool ya, and we done it. Jus stood there like a hammered sheep. Wisht Grampad been here to see. Looked like somebodyd beat ya between the eyes with a sledge. Grampa would a whacked imself so hard hed a throwed his hip out–like he done when he seen Al take a shot at that grea big airship the army got. Tommy, it come over one day, half a mile big, an Al gets the thirty-thirty and blazes away at her. Grampa yells, Dont shoot no fledglins, Al; wait till a growed-up one goes over, an then he whacked imself an throwed his hip out.

Adults, in their dealing with children, are insane, he [Ed Ricketts] said. And children know it too. Adults lay down rules they would not think of following, speak truths they do not believe. And yet they expect children to obey the rules, believe the truths, and admire and respect their parents for this nonsense. Children must be very wise and secret to tolerate adults at all. And the greatest nonsense of all that adults expect children to believe is that people learn by experience. No greater lie was ever revered. And its falseness is immediately discerned by children since their parents obviously have not learned anything by experience. Far from learning, adults simply become set in a maze of prejudices and dreams and sets of rules whose origins they do not know and would not dare inspect for fear the whole structure might topple over on them. I think children instinctively know this, Ed said. Intelligent children learn to conceal their knowledge and keep free of this howling mania.

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isnt telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our live trying to be less lonesome. And one of our ancient methods is to tell a story, begging the listener to say, and to feel, Yes, thats the way it is, or at least thats the way I feel it. Youre not as alone as you thought. To finish is sadness to a writer, a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isnt really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.

Its so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.

A child may ask, “What is the world’s story about?” And a grown man or woman may wonder, “What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about?”I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?

My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.

Men all do about the same thing when they wake up.

The house was clean, scrubbed and immaculate, curtains washed, windows polished, but all as a man does it - the ironed curtains did not hang quite straight and there were streaks on the windows and a square showed on the table when a book was moved.

Henry liked fun and avoided when he could any solemn or serious matter, for he confused these with sorrow.

Look here,” said Will. “When a man comes to me for advice about an idea, I know he doesn’twant advice. He wants me to agree with him. And if I want to keep his friendship I tell him his idea isfine and go ahead. But I like you and you’re a friend of my family, so I’m going to stick my neck out.

Beside them, little pot-bellied men in light suits and panama hats; clean, pink men with puzzled, worried eyes, with restless eyes. Worried because formulas do not work out; hungry for security and yet sensing its disappearance from the earth. In their lapels the insignia of lodges and service clubs, places where they can go and, by a weight of numbers of little worried men, reassure themselves that business is noble and not the curious ritualized thievery they know it is; that business men are intelligent in spite of the records of their stupidity; that they are kind and charitable in spite of the principles of sound business; that their lives are rich instead of the thin tiresome routines they know; and that a time is coming when they will not be afraid any more.

When two men live together they usually maintain a kind of shabby neatness out of incipient rage at each other. Two men alone are constantly on the verge of fighting, and they know it.

During the years he was never sick, except of course for the chronic indigestion which was universal, and still is, with men who live alone, cook for themselves, and eat in solitude.

Any man of reasonable intelligence can make money if thats what he wants. Mostly its women or clothes or admiration he really wants and they deflect him.

Its 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 mans life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.

Memory of the knife will be gone when the flesh is gone.

This is beyond understanding. said the king. You are the wisest man alive. You know what is preparing. Why do you not make a plan to save yourself?And Merlin said quietly, Because I am wise. In the combat between wisdom and feeling, wisdom never wins.

I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every states I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move.