Quotes from John Steinbeck

I've never been content to pass a stone without looking under it. And it is a black disappointment to me that I can never see the far side of the moon.

In marching, in mobs, in football games, and in war, outlines become vague; real things become unreal and a fog creeps over the mind. Tension and excitement, weariness, movement--all merge in one great gray dream, so that when it is over, it is hard to remember how it was when you killed men or ordered them to be killed. Then other people who were not there tell you what it was like and you say vaguely, yes, I guess that's how it was.

I've always been amused by the contention that brain work is harder than manual labor. I've never known a man to leave a desk for a muck-stick if he could avoid it.

I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but I do have a choice of how I do it.

He did not know, and perhaps this doctor did. And he could not take the chance of pitting his certain ignorance against this man's possible knowledge. He was trapped as his people were always trapped, and would be until, as he had said, they could be sure that the things in the books ere really in the books.

In the bathroom two water tumblers were sealed in cellophane sacks with the words: These glasses are sterilized for your protection. Across the toilet seat a strip of paper bore the message: This seat has been sterilized with ultraviolet light for your protection. Everyone was protecting me and it was horrible.

A dog...is a bond between strangers.

You see, there's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.

Tom felt his darkness. His father was beautiful and clever, his mother was short and mathematically sure. Each of his brothers and sisters had looks or gifts or fortune. Tom loved all of them passionately, but he felt heavy and earth-bound. He climbed ecstatic mountains and floundered in the rocky darkness between the peaks. He had spurts of bravery but they were bracketed in battens of cowardice.

The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in lots of people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does.

war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for new weariness and new hatreds.

Go through the motions, Adam." "What motions?" "Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.

Because he loved true things he tried to explain.

We're sorry. It's not us. It's the monster. The bank isn't a man. The bank isn't like a man. Yes, but the bank is only made of men.

If we could learn to like ourselves, even a little, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.

Thou knowest not what bitches women are, Danny said wisely. I do know, said Pilon. Thou knowest not. I do know. Liar.

I always found in myself a dread of west and a love of east.

We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.

You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.

I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.

And because they were in some way one thing and one purpose, she smiled with him. And they began this day with hope.

Some days are born ugly. From the very first light they are no damn good what ever the weather, and everbody knows it. No one knows what causes this, but on such a day people resist getting out of bed and set their heels against the day. When they are finally forced out by hunger or job they find that the day is just as lousy as they knew it would be.

Names are a great mystery. I've never known whether the name is molded by the child or the child changed to fit the name. But you can be sure of this- whenever a human has a nickname it is a proof that the name given him was wrong.

Abra was ready ere I called her name. And though I called another, Abra came.