He put on a little knapsack and he walked through Indiana and Kentucky and North Carolina and Georgia clear to Florida. He walked among farmers and mountain people, among swamp people and fishermen. And everywhere people asked him why he was walking through the country. Because he loved true things he tried to explain.
JOHN STEINBECK, Cannery Row
Sure, cried the tenant men, but it's our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it's no good, it's still ours. That's what makes it ours-being born on it, working it, dying on it.
JOHN STEINBECK, The Grapes of Wrath
Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.
JOHN STEINBECK, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.
JOHN STEINBECK, The Grapes of Wrath
Just like heaven. Ever'body wants a little piece of lan'. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It's just in their head. They're all the time talkin' about it, but it's jus' in their head.
JOHN STEINBECK, Of Mice and Men
In no social institution is the codified ritual of behavior more rigid than in funerals. Imagine the indignation if the minister altered his sermon or experimented with facial expression. Consider the shock if, at the funeral parlors, any chairs were used but those little folding yellow torture chairs with the hard seats. No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration.
JOHN STEINBECK, Tortilla Flat
Underneath the topmost layers of frailty, men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love.
JOHN STEINBECK, attributed, The Practice of Psychological Assessment
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 home, no place else is good enough.
JOHN STEINBECK, America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction
It's nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.
JOHN STEINBECK, East of Eden
Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience.
JOHN STEINBECK, East of Eden
Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.
JOHN STEINBECK, East of Eden
Cathy's lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or responsibility, and they were used for profit. Most liars are tripped up either because they forget what they have told or because the lie is suddenly faced with an incontrovertible truth. But Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also -- either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth as though it were a lie. If one is accused of a lie and it turns out to be the truth, there is a backlog that will last a long time and protect a number of untruths.
