John Steinbeck Quotes
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Lennie begged, "Le's do it now. Le's get that place now." "Sure right now. I gotta. We gotta.
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We don't take a trip. A trip takes us.
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There's a capacity for appetite... that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfy
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The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size.
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Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts.
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A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.
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People don't want advice...only corroboration.
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Maybe not having time to think is not having the wish to think.
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Within that frame he went a long way and burned a deep scar.
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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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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.
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We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.
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Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.
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I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a satisfaction like that which follows good and shared love.
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When you know a friend is there you do not go to see him. Then he's gone and you blast your conscience to shreds that you did not see him.
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Strength and success; they are above morality, above criticism. It seems then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it.
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It is my experience that in some areas [my poodle] Charley is more intelligent that I am, but in others he is abysmally ignorant. He can't read, can't drive a car, and has no grasp of mathematics. But in his own field of endeavor, which he is now practicing, the slow, imperial smelling over and anointing on an area, he has no peer. Of course his horizons are limited, but how wide are mine?
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It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods.
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If you want to keep a friend, never test him.
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Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world, of all living things.
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The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.
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Fella says today, 'Depression is over. I seen a jackrabbit, an' they wasn't nobody after him.' An' another fella says, 'That aint the reason. Can't afford to kill jackrabbits no more. Catch 'em and milk 'em an' turn 'em loose. One you seen prob'ly gone dry.
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I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.
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Men all do about the same thing when they wake up.
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I do want to make it very convincing. And the best way to do that is to put most of it in dialogue.
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Some people there are who, being grown; forget the horrible task of learning to read. It is perhaps the greatest single effort that the human undertakes, and he must do it as a child.
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The land is so much more than its analysis.
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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.
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An ocean without unnamed monsters would be like sleep without dreams.
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life passes by in a wink so try to never miss a moment of it
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