Quotes from John Steinbeck

and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. The Grapes Of Wrath

I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing -maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent towards gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed -because 'Thou mayest.

There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension

But it must be hard living the Lily Maid, the Goddess-Virgin, and the other all at once. Humans just do smell bad sometimes.

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

There's people that when they see Samuel Hamilton the first time might get the idea he's full of bull. He don't talk like other people. He's an Irishman. And he's all full of plans—a hundred plans a day. And he's all full of hope.

along the road. He heard the iron tires of the cart grinding on the road. He turned and looked after it, and on the slope he saw old Samuel against the sky, his white hair shining with starlight.

For nitrates are not the land, nor phosphates and the length of fiber in the cotton is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, much more; and the land is so much more than its analysis.

The doctor said softly, "Sometimes I think you realists are the most sentimental people in the world.

It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough.

You're growing up. Maybe that's it," he said softly. Sometimes I think the world tests us most sharply then, and we turn inward and watch ourselves with horror. But that's not the worst. We think everybody is seeing into us. Then dirt is very dirty and purity is shining white. Aron, it will be over. Wait only a little while and it will be over.

We do know that we are cheated from birth to the overcharge on our coffins. But we survive.

When Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, only five Americans had previously been so honored. Accepting the prize in Stockholm, he gave an impassioned speech in which he argued that "the ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.

And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.

Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold.

Just Jim Casy now. Ain't got the call no more. Got a lot of sinful idears—but they seem kinda sensible.

WAR COMES ALWAYS to someone else. In Salinas we were aware that the United States was the greatest and most powerful nation in the world. Every American was a rifleman by birth, and one American was worth ten or twenty foreigners in a fight.

During the years he was never sick, except of course for the chronic indigestion which was universal, and still is, with men who live alone, cook for themselves, and eat in solitude.

It's like me, I wouldn' take the good ol' gospel that was just layin' there to my hand. I got to be pickin' at it until I got it all tore down.

A war comes always to someone else...The war, at first anyway, was for other people...And just as war is always for somebody else, so it is also true that someone else always gets killed. And Mother of God! that wasn't true either...

Well, you keep your place then, Nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny." Crooks had reduced himself to nothing. There was no personality, no ego—nothing to arouse either like or dislike. He said, "Yes, ma'am," and his voice was toneless. For

There is no explaining a series of misfortunes like that. Every man blames himself. People in their black minds remember sins committed secretly and wonder whether they have caused the evil sequence

Maybe less you have, the more you are required to boast.

Liza hated alcoholic liquors with an iron zeal. Dribking alcohol in any form she regarded as a crime against a properly outraged diety. Not only would she not touch it herself, but she resisted its enjoyment by anyone else. The result naturally was that her husband Samuel and all her children had a good lusty love for a drink.