Quotes from John Steinbeck

At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

The compass simply represents the ideal, present but unachievable, and sight-steering a compromise with perfection which allows your boat to exist at all.

We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.

He went to his own dark house and lighted the lamps and set fire in the stove. The clock wound by Elizabeth still ticked, storing in its spring the pressure of her hand, and the wool socks she had hung to dry over the stove screen were still damp. These were vital parts of Elizabeth that were not dead yet. Joseph pondered slowly over it. Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased. I remember a man in Salinas who in his middle years traveled to Honolulu and back, and that journey continued for the rest of his life. We could watch him in his rocking chair on his front porch, his eyes squinted, half-closed, endlessly traveling to Honolulu.

Some men ease themselves like setting hens into the nest of death.

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love.

But it isn't hunger that drives millions of armed American Males to forests and hills every autumn, as the high incidence of heart failure among the hunters will prove. Somehow the hunting process has to do with masculinity, but I don't quite know how.

They know that ten heads lopped off will destroy them, but we are a free people; we have as many heads as we have people, and in a time of need leaders pop up among us like mushrooms.

Within that frame he went a long way and burned a deep scar.

Lanser said, There are no peaceful people, when will you learn it? There are no friendly people, can't you understand that?

The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say.

Let's get it over and the door closed shut on it! Let's close it like a book and go on reading! New chapter, new life.

Who in his mind has not probe the dark water?

There's a capacity for apetite, Samuel said, that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfy

Misfortune is a fact of nature acceptable to women, especially when it falls on other women.

The Lord in his wisdom gave money to very curious people, perhaps because they'd starve without. -Liza

I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.

Perhaps we have overrated roots as a psychic need. Maybe the greater the urge, the deeper and more ancient is the need, the will, the hunger to be somewhere else.

That was a time when a man had the right to be burried by his own son an' a son had the right to burry his own father.

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

Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time.

A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many.

That is a great mystery," said Doctor Winter. "That is a mystery that has disturbed rulers all over the world—how the people know. It disturbs the invaders now, I am told, how news runs through censorships, how the truth of things fights free of control. It is a great mystery.