Quotes from John Steinbeck

Me puse a formular una nueva ley que describiese la relación entre protección y abatimiento. Un alma triste puede matarte más deprisa que un germen, mucho más rápido.

Now the tents of the late-comers filled the little flat, and those who had the boxcars were old-timers, and in a way aristocrats.

The shame of their ignorance was too great for the children.

Young Henry was conscious, this night, that he had lived for fifteen tedious years without accomplishing any single thing of importance. And had his mother known his feeling she would have said, 'He is growing.' And his father would have repeated after her, 'Yes, the boy is growing.' But neither would have understood what the other meant.

The dusk passed into dark, and the desert stars came out in the soft sky, stars stabbing and sharp, with few points and rays to them, and the sky was velvet. And the heat changed. While the sun was up, it was a beating, flailing heat, but now the heat came from below, from the earth itself, and the heat was thick and muffling.

It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.

Her life is one of revenge on other people because of a vague feeling of her own lack. A man born blind must in a sense hate eyes as well as envy them. A blind man might wish to remove all of the eyes in the world.

he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do'll make him feel rich—not rich like Mis' Wilson was when she give her tent when Grampa died.

The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing.

Muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him— goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest.

Well, here's your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts—the pleasures of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation. And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you. And still the box is not full.

Sometimes I think a do-gooder is the most dangerous thing in the world.

Ever'body's askin' that. 'What we comin' to?' Seems to me we don't never come to nothin'. Always on the way.

I can tell all I want about them now because they are all dead and they won't resent the truth about themselves.

Her full face was not soft; it was controlled, kindly. Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding.

A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

But 'Thou mayest'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.

Non abbiamo conclusioni da trarre, tranne che il popolo russo è come tutti i popoli del mondo. Di certo c'è gente cattiva tra loro, ma i buoni sono la stragrande maggioranza.

Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost--good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies any more, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word. There was a time when people kept their fly buttons fastened. And man's freedom was boiling off. Where did all the good stones go, and all simplicity?

And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden.

Well, maybe, like Casy says, a fella ain't got a soul of his own, but on'y a piece of a big one- an' then- Then what, Tom? Then it don' matter. Then I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be ever'where- wherever you look. p419

Não tem medo que não seja bom como a gente imaginou? [morar na Califórnia] Respondeu ela rapidamente - [...] Seria viver muitas vidas ao mesmo tempo. Temos mil vidas diante de nós, mas, ao fim delas, todas se tornam uma só.

He raised his face into the sky and his soul arose out of him into the sun's afterglow.

I know what you hate. You hate something in them you can't understand. You don't hate their evil. You have the good in them you can't get at. I wonder what you want, what final thing.