Quotes from John Steinbeck

So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda.

War ... a reversal of the rules where a man is permitted to kill all the humans he can.

The Mexican War was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murders settled on us, the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible.

It must be a hard thing to kill a man you don't know and don't hate.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man.

Luck, you see, brings bitter friends.

It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods.

Intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over.

The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.

Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.

If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he'd better do it in a town where he wasn't known.

I guess this is why I hate governments, all governments. It is always the rule, the fine print, carried out by fine-print men. There's nothing to fight, no wall to hammer with frustrated fists.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.

That man who is more then his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis.

A man on a horse is spiritually, as well as physically, bigger then a man on foot.

I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.

Some men hunger so much for love that they lose everything that is loveable about them.

Only let a man say that he will do something and a whole mechanism goes to work to stop him.

A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief.

Some men are friends with the whole world in their hearts, and there are others that hate themselves and spread their hatred around like butter on hot bread.

Yes, you should talk," he said. "Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth.

Men really do need sea-monsters in their personal oceans