John Steinbeck

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

“Beans are a warm cloak against economic cold.”

“Tom's cowardice was as huge as his courage, as it must be in great men.”

“I know it might be better for you to come out from under your might-have-beens, into the winds of the world.”

“He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on.”

“All of them had a restlessness in common.”

“You must name a thing before you can note it on your hand drawn map.”

“Because time does the job, dynamite can't touch. (Samuel Hamilton)”

“The bank - or the Company - needs - wants -insists - must have - as though the bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them... The banks were machines and masters all at the same time...They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don't get it they die... It is a sad thing, but it is so. It is just so.”

“I been thinkin'," he said. "I been in the hills, thinkin', almost you might say like Jesus went into the wilderness to think His way out of a mess of troubles. Seems like Jesus got all messed up with troubles, and He couldn't figure nothin' out, an' He got to feelin' what the hell good is it all, an' what's the use fightin' an' figurin'. Got tired, got good an' tired, an' His sperit all wore out. Jus' about come to the conclusion, the hell with it. An' so He went off into the wilderness." "I ain't sayin' I'm like Jesus," the preacher went on. "But I got tired like Him, an' I got mixed up like Him, an' I went into the wilderness like Him, without no campin' stuff. Nighttime I'd lay on my back an' look up at the stars; morning I'd set an' watch the sun come up; midday I'd look out from a hill at the rollin' dry country; evenin' I'd foller the sun down. Sometimes I'd pray like I always done. On'y I couldn' figure what I was prayin' to or for. There was the hills, an' there was me, an' we wasn't separate no more. We was one thing. An' that one thing was holy." "An' I got thinkin', on'y it wasn't thinkin, it was deeper down than thinkin'. I got thinkin' how we was holy when we was one thing, an' mankin' was holy when it was one thing. An' it on'y got unholy when one mis'able little fella got the bit in his teeth an' run off his own way, kickin' an' draggin' an' fightin'. Fella like that bust the holiness. But when they're all workin' together, not one fella for another fella, but one fella kind of harnessed to the whole shebang—that's right, that's holy. An' then I got thinkin' I don't even know what I mean by holy."He paused, but the bowed heads stayed down, for they had been trained like dogs to rise at the "amen" signal. "I can't say no grace like I use' ta say. I'm glad of the holiness of breakfast. I'm glad there's love here. That's all." The heads stayed down. The preacher looked around. "I've got your breakfast cold," he said; and then he remembered. "Amen," he said, and all the heads rose up.”

“I seem to know that there’s a part of you missing. Some men can’t see the color green, but they may never know they can’t. I think you are only a part of a human. I can’t do anything about that. But I wonder whether you ever feel that something invisible is all around you. It would be horrible if you knew it was there and couldn’t see it or feel it.”

“Old Sam Hamilton saw this coming. He said there couldn’t be any more universal philosophers. The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb. He saw a time when one man would know only one little fragment, but he would know it well.”“Yes,” Lee said from the doorway, “and he deplored it. He hated it.”“Did he, now?” Adam asked...“Now you question it, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know whether he hated it or I hate it for him... Maybe the knowledge is too great and maybe men are growing too small... Maybe kneeling down to atoms, they’re becoming atom-sized in their souls. Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage. And think what any specialist misses! The whole world over his fence!”“We’re only talking about making a living.”“A living? Or money?” Lee said excitedly. “Money’s easy to make if it’s money you want. But with a few exceptions people don’t want money. They want luxury, and they want love, and they want admiration.”

“At last he said, "Did you come out of the big mountains?"Gitano shook his head slowly. "No, I walked down the Salinas Valley."The afternoon thought would not let Joey go. "Did you ever go into the big mountains back there?"The old dark eyes grew fixed, and their light turned inward on the years that were living in Gitano's head.”

“Oare noi actionam ca urmare a gandirii, sau simtirea este aceea care stimuleaza actiunea, si numai uneori gandirea devine motorul actiunii?”

“Ceea ce este bun pentru unul, poate fi rau pentru altul, si numai la sfarsit poti sa stii ce a fost bun si ce a fost rau.”

“Sometimes it seems that the leaders of nations are little boys with chips on their shoulders, daring each other to knock them off.”

“A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty.”

“Nobody has the right to remove any single experience from another. Life and death are promised. We have a right to pain.”

“In all the mad incongruity, the turgid stultiloquy of life, I felt, at least, securely anchored to myself. Whatever the vacillations of other people, I thought myself terrifically constant. But now, here I am, dragging a frayed line, and my anchor gone.”

“The men of Spain held ground for a little while, but then their hearts broke under their fine red coats, and they ran away to hide in the jungle.”

“The ship started a school of fliers that skipped along the wave tops like shining silver coins."These are the ghosts of treasures ost at sea," the cook went on, "the murder things, emeralds and diamonds and gold; the sins of men, committed for them, stick to them and make them haunt the ocean. Ah! It's a poor thing if a sailor will not make a grand tale about it."Henry pointed to a great tortoise asleep on the surface. "And what is the tale of the turtles?" He asked."Nothing; only food...”

“I have had a lifelong association with these things. (Odd that the word 'trees' does not apply.) I can accept them and their power and their age because I was early exposed to them. ON the other hand, people lacking such experience begin to have a feeling of uneasiness here, of danger, of being shut in, enclosed and overwhelmed. It is not only the size of these redwoods but their strangeness that frightens them. And why not? For these are the last remaining members of a race that flourished over four continents as far back in geologic time as the upper Jurassic period. Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while in the Eocene and Miocene they were spread over England and Europe and America. And then the glaciers moved down and wiped the Titans out beyond recovery. And only these few are left--a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it?”

“I could be held back just by being needed. Please try not to need me. That's the worst bait of all to a lonely man.”

“He stopped, feeling lonely in his long speech.”

“Cînd eşti copil, eşti în centrul tuturor lucrurilor. Totul se întîmplă pentru tine. Ceilalţi oameni? Sînt doar nişte fantome puse la dispoziţia ta ca să le vorbeşti. Dar cînd creşti, îţi iei locul şi îţi capeţi măsura şi forma ta proprie. Anumite lucruri pornesc de la tine spre ceilalţi şi îţi vin ţie din partea altora. E mai rău, dar e şi mult mai bine aşa”

“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth. There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

“Spiritually the jugs may be graduated thus: Just below the shoulder of the first bottle, serious and concentrated conversation. Two inches farther down, sweetly sad memory. Three inches more, thoughts of old and satisfactory loves. An inch, thoughts of old and bitter loves. Bottom of the first jug, general and undirected sadness. Shoulder of the second jug, black, unholy despondency. Two fingers down, a song of death or longing. A thumb, every other song each one knows. The graduation stops here, for the trail splits and there is no certainty. From this point on, anything can happen.”

“Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing.Quoted by Richard Wagamese in Ragged Company”

“We know what we got, and we don't care whether you know it or not.”

“Literature is not a game for the cloistered elect. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become more needed.”

“I carry a gun cause a cop is too heavy.”

“All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.”

“I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble.”

“There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen.”

“Could it be that Americans are a restless people, a mobile people, never satisfied with where they are as a matter of selection? The pioneers, the immigrants who peopled the continent, were the restless ones in Europe. The steady rooted ones stayed home and are still there. But every one of us...are descended from the restless ones, the wayward ones who were not content to stay at home. Wouldn't it be unusual if we had not inherited this tendency? And the fact is that we have.”

“Strange things happened to them . . . some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that faith is refired forever.”

“Financial bitterness could not eat too deeply into Mack and the boys, for they were not mercantile men. They did not measure their joy in goods sold, their egos in bank balances, nor their loves in what they cost.”

“Well, I remember this girl. I am not whole without her. I am not alive without her. When she was with me I was more alive than I have ever been, and not only when she was pleasant either. Even when we were fighting I was whole.”

“A town is a thing like a colonial animal. A town has a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet. A town is a thing separate from all other towns alike. And a town has a whole emotion. How news travels through a town is a mystery not easily to be solved. News seems to move faster than small boys can scramble and dart to tell it, faster than women can call it over the fences.”

“First—if you are in love—that’s a good thing—that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.Second—There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.”

“I've given you everything a friend can give, Joe Saul-even contempt, and that's the hardest thing of all.”

“It is a cosmic joke. Preoccupation with survival has set the stage for extinction.”

“When the fair gold morning of April stirred Mary Hawley awake, she turned over to her husband and saw him, little fingers pulling a frog mouth at her.”

“There's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.”

“You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.”

“Will you stay to dinner?" Adam asked."I will not be responsible for the murder of more chickens," said Samuel."Lee's got a pot roast.""Well, in that case--”

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

“A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our live trying to be less lonesome. And one of our ancient methods is to tell a story, begging the listener to say, and to feel, "Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought." To finish is sadness to a writer, a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.”

“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.”

“I don't know. It's like getting up in the morning. I don't want to get up but I don't want to stay in bed either.”