Quotes from John Steinbeck

When a city begins to grow and spread outward, from the edges, the center which was once its glory is in a sense abandoned to time. Then the buildings grow dark and a kind of decay sets in; poorer people move in as the rents fall, and small fringe businesses take the place of once flowering establishments. The district is still too good to tear down and too outmoded to be desirable.

No one knows how greatness comes to a man. It may lie in his blackness, sleeping, or it may lance into him like those driven fiery particles from outer space. These things, however, are known about greatness: need gives it life and puts it in action; it never comes without pain; it leaves a man changed, chastened, and exalted at the same time—he can never return to simplicity.

The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second." "Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?

an' a man, strong an' healthy, ain't never no burden.

Los hombres comían algo que no habían cultivado y no había conexión entre ellos y el pan. La tierra daba frutos sometidos al hierro y bajo el hierro moría gradualmente; porque no había para ella ni amor ni odio, y no se le ofrecían oraciones ni se le echaban maldiciones.

There's something desirable about anything you're used to as opposed to something you're not.

You know, Mr. Trask, once I had a wife. I made her up just as you did, only mine had no life outside my mind. She was good company in my little room. I would talk and she would listen, and then she would talk, would tell me all the happenings of a woman's afternoon. She was very pretty and she made coquettish little jokes. But now I don't know whether I would listen to her. And I wouldn't want to make her sad or lonely. So there's my first plan gone.

She was about as wide open as a fist.

Pacific Grove benefits by one of those happy accidents of nature that gladden the heart, excite the imagination, and instruct the young.

Surely most men are destroyed, but there are others who like pillars of fire guide frightened men through the darkest. 'Thou mayest, thou mayest!' What glory! It is true that we are weak and sick and quarrelsome, but if that is all we ever were, we would, millenniums ago, have disappeared from the face of the earth.

Together they pulled the door shut, and suddenly the car was dark and warm, and it throbbed like the body of a bass viol. The beat of wheels on the rail-ends grew less rapid as the freight slowed to go through the town.

Azt mondják, tiszta vágás gyógyul be leghamarabb. Nincs szomorítóbb dolog a szememben, mint az olyan kapcsolat, amelyet nem tart össze más, csak a ragacs a postabélyeg hátán. Ha nem láthatod, nem hallhatod, nem érintheted meg a barátodat, legjobb, ha hagyod, menjen isten hírével.

Can you imagine? said Adam. 'He'll know so many new things. I wonder if he'll talk different. You know, Lee, in the East a boy takes on the speech of his school. You can tell a Harvard man from a Princeton man. At least that's what they say.' 'I'll listen,' said Lee. 'I wonder what dialect they speak at Stanford.

About the whole face there was a granite dignity, so that every motion seemed an impossible thing. Once at rest, it seemed the old man would be stone, would never move again. His steps were slow and certain. Once made, no step could ever be retraced; once headed in a direction, the path would never bend nor the pace increase nor slow.

What made 'em bad was they needed stuff.

There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen.

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 state I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move.

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders. The

It took Doc longer to go places than other people. He didn't drive fast and he stopped and ate hamburgers very often.

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.

That's why I'm talking to you. You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.

She didn't understand stags or what satisfaction the men got out of them, but there they were, and she made fifty dollars for taking off her clothes and that was better than having them torn off in an office.

His sleep was a shouting, echoing black cave, and it extended into eternity.

Then, with time, the squatters were no longer squatters, but owners;