John Steinbeck Quotes About Literature
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It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.
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The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.
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The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.
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Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.
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Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species. --speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1962
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Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of a human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed
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One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.
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The literature of science is filled with answers found when the question propounded had an entirely different direction and end.
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No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.
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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.
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The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
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In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
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Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.
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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.
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A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.
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It is customary for the recipient of this award to offer personal or scholarly comment on the nature and the direction of literature. At this particular time, however, I think it would be well to consider the high duties and the responsibilities of the makers of literature.
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Critics are the eunuchs of literature. They stand by in envious awe while the whole man and his partner demonstrate the art of living.
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I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
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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.
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Boileau said that Kings, Gods and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren't very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor.
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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.
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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.
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I think today if we forbade our illiterate children to touch the wonderful things of our literature, perhaps they might steal them and find secret joy.
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Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
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Ever'body's askin' that. "What we comin' to?" Seems to me we don't never come to nothin'. Always on the way.
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I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.
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The story [Henny-Penny] has the best opening in all literature-"The sky is falling," cried Henny-Penny, "and a piece of it fell on my tail.
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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.
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Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches, nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair.
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