John Steinbeck

What a frightening thing is the human a mass of gauges and dials and registers and we can only read a few and those perhaps not accurately.

Once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.

And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.

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.

It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

You know what it is? San Francisco is a golden handcuff with the key thrown away.

Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word. And there's an opening convey of generalities. A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.

You don't even know where I'm going. I don't care. I'd like to go anywhere.

The great concepts of oneness and of majestic order seem always to be born in the desert.

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

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.

Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.

No one wants advice - only corroboration.

Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.

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

Perhaps the less we have the more we are required to brag.

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

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

A wife is like a children's movie; always under-appreciated and without either, life would be incomplete.

You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

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

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

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

A man with a beard was always a little suspect anyway. You couldnt say you wore a beard because you liked a beard. People didnt like you for telling the truth. You had to say you had a scar so you couldnt shave.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world.

New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it - once you have lived in New York and it has become your h

Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.

People don't take trips, trips take people.

If you understand each other you will be kind to each other.

It seems to me Montana is a great splash of grandeur. The scale is huge but not overpowering. The land is rich with grass and color, and the mountains are the kind I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda.

Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.

I got you to look after me and you got me to look after you and thats why.

Time is the only critic without ambition.

We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

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.

What good is the warmth of summer without the cold of winter to give it sweetness You only truly deeply appreciate and are grateful for something when you compare and contrast it to something worse.

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

A sad soul can kill you quicker than a germ.

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

If youre in trouble or hurt or need go to the poor people. Theyre the only ones thatll help the only ones.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

To be alive at all is to have scars.

The trash and litter of nature disappears into the ground with the passing of each year, but man's litter has more permanence.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

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

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.

People don’t take trips, trips take people.

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

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

For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.

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.

All war is a symptom of mans failure as a thinking animal.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

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

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he'd better do it in a town where he wasn't known.

And finally in our time a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.

In March the soft rains continued, and each storm waited courteously until its predecessor sunk beneath the ground.

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

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

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.

Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good by is short and final a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.

So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

What hidden hoarded longings there are in all of us.

I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?

What good is the warmth of summer without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

Like most passionate nations, Texas has its own history based on, but not limited by, facts.

A sad soul can kill you quicker than a germ

There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.