Quotes from John Steinbeck

I seen her beat the hell out of a tin peddler with a live chicken one time 'cause he give her a argument. She had the chicken in one han', an' the ax in the other, about to cut its head off. She aimed to go for that peddler with the ax, but she forgot which hand was which, an' she takes after him with the chicken. Couldn' even eat that chicken when she got done. They wasn't nothing but a pair a legs in her han'. Grampa throwed his hip outa joint laughin'. How'd my folks go so easy?

And this is about the way the Salinas Valley was when my grandfather brought his wife and settled in the foothills to the east of King City.

is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

Come back with your shield or on it.

I hope you know what you're doing when you issue me a license to talk. I've heard two ways of looking at it. One says the silent man is the wise man and the other that a man without words is a man without thought. Naturally I favor the second

How much is whiskey a gallon?" "I don't know," said Hughie. "I never get more than a half pint at a time myself—at one time that is. I figure you get a quart and right away you got friends. But you get a half pint and you can drink it in the lot before— well before you got a lot of folks around.

I want a cold drink.

In the summer when the hands of a clock point to seven, it is a nice time to get up, but in winter the same time is of no value whatever. How much better is the sun!

and the night moved restlessly about the house.

The climate changed quickly to cold and the trees burst into color, the reds and yellows you can't believe. It isn't only color but a glowing, as though the leaves gobbled the light of the autumn sun and then released it slowly. There's a quality of fire in these colors. I got high in the mountains before dusk.

Mind, I congratulate you. You jumped me to sex, translated it to aesthetics, and ended with sour grapes. How dishonest can I be? And all because I don't want to go to work. I'll work my head off to avoid work. Come, mind. This time you don't get away with it - back to the desk.

Thou mayest rule over sin.

a beard is the one thing a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.

You love beer so much. I'll bet some day you'll go in and order a beer milk shake.

She liked the idea so well that she felt there must be something bordering on sin involved in it.

Yes, I can understand that. It must be a hard thing to kill a man you don't know and don't hate." "Maybe that makes it easier," said Louis. "You have a point, Louis. But 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.

Let any gay and hopeful thing happen to a man, and some chicken goes howling to the block.

Casy turned to Tom. "Funny how you fellas can fix a car. Jus' light right in an' fix her. I couldn't fix no car, not even now when I seen you do it.'' "Got to grow into her when you're a little kid,'' Tom said. "It ain't jus' knowin'. It's more'n that. Kids now can tear down a car 'thout even thinkin' about it.

I don't know what directed his steps toward the Salinas Valley. It was an unlikely place for a man from a green country to come to, but he came about thirty years before the turn of the century and brought with him his tiny Irish wife, a tight hard little woman humorless as a chicken. She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do.

Without travel, writing dies.

They collected souls as they collected jewels.

What do I want in a doctor? Perhaps more than anything else—a friend with special knowledge.

It's hard to give people things—I guess it's harder to be given things, though.

They reminded him of something—what was it?—some memory, some picture. He strove to find it and then it came of itself. It rose out of the years complete with all its colours and its cries, its crowded feelings.