Quotes from John Steinbeck

He drank too much when he could get it, ate too much when it was there, talked too much all the time.

Sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person-and write to that one.

The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

I've lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate

The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.

I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.

The free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after a committee of sleep has worked on it.

All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.

They's movement now. People moving. We know why, an' we know how. Movin' 'cause they got to. That's why folks always move. Movin' 'cause they want somepin better'n what they got. An' that's the on'y way they'll ever git it.

An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.

Okie use' ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you're scum. Don't mean nothing itself, it's the way they say it.

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

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

A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming.

A sad soul can kill you quicker than a germ.

Today I had set aside for spading. Now there is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp. You turn a spade full and then carefully knock all the lumps to pieces and you go on for hours without thinking about anything.

If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.

Don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens - The Main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

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.

A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, and sick.