Quotes from John Steinbeck

It's the lie I'm thinking of. It might infect everything. If they ever found out you'd lied to them about this, the true things would suffer. They wouldn't believe anything then." "Yes, I see. But what can I tell them? I couldn't tell them the whole truth." "Maybe you can tell them a part truth, enough so that you won't suffer if they find out.

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.

Only in laziness can one achieve a state of contemplation which is a balancing of values, a weighing of oneself against the world and the world against itself. A busy man cannot find time for such balancing. We do not think a lazy man can commit murders, nor great thefts, nor lead a mob. He would be more likely to think about it and laugh. And a nation of lazy contemplative men would be incapable of fighting a war unless their very laziness were attacked. Wars are the activities of busy-ness.

Salinas for the alkali which was white as salt.

At this very moment Pablo Sanchez happened to be sitting in the ditch at the side of the road, wishing he had a cigarette and a glass of wine. Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God. Pablo

To be alive at is to have scars.

We learned then that war was not a quick heroic charge but a slow, incredibly complicated matter.

People have so often been hurt and trapped and tortured by ideas and contraptions which they did not understand, that they have come to believe all things passing their understanding are vicious and evil—things to be stamped out and destroyed by the first comer. They only protect themselves, thus, against the ghastly hurts that can come to them from little things grown up.

It is a fact verified and recorded in many histories that the soul capable of the greatest good is also capable of the greatest evil.

Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.

Besides, as Cyrus became more military, his wife learned the only technique through which a soldier can survive. She never made herself noticeable, never spoke unless spoken to, performed what was expected and no more, and tried for no promotions. She became a rear rank private. It was much easier that way. Alice retired to the background until she was barely visible at all.

Charles is not afraid. So he could never learn anything of courage.

SOMETIMES, BUT NOT OFTEN, a rain comes to the Salinas Valley in November. It is so rare that the Journal or the Index or both carry editorials about it. The hills turn to a soft green overnight and the air smells good. Rain at this time is not particularly good in an agricultural sense unless it is going to continue, and this is extremely unusual. More commonly, the dryness comes back and the fuzz of grass withers or a little frost

I will know from your talk whether I can offer an honest opinion or whether it is better to reassure you in your own.

Men and women wanted to inspect her, to be close to her, to try to find what caused the disturbance she distributed so subtly. And since this had always been so, Cathy did not find it strange.

The sea lions felt it and their barking took on a tone and a cadence that would have gladdened the heart of St. Francis. Little girls

As is usually true of a man of one idea, he became obsessed.

To hell with that rotten century! 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. A man will have clean hands once we get the lid slammed shut on that stinking century. It's a fair thing ahead. There's no rot on this clean new hundred years. It's not stacked, and any bastard who deals seconds from this new deck of years— why, we'll crucify him head down over a privy.

We each peeled a stick and solemnly chewed it; it was Beeman's peppermint, and nothing so delicious has been made since.

And the women sighed with relief, for they knew it was all right—the break had not come; and the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.

In the wet hay of leaking barns babies were born to women who panted with pneumonia. And old people curled up in corners and died that way, so that the coroners could not straighten them. At night frantic men walked boldly to hen roosts and carried off the squawking chickens. If they were shot at, they did not run, but splashed sullenly away; and if they were hit, they sank tiredly in the mud.

She shook her head slowly from side to side. "I'm jus' pain covered with skin.

Oh! Alice in Wonderland. You're too big for that.

He used it to haul squids and he liked a fresh breeze to blow in his face. His name was Francis Almones and he had a sad life, for he always made just a fraction less than he needed to live.