John Steinbeck

“I seen it over an' over—a guy talkin' to another guy and it don't make no difference if he don't hear or understand. The thing is, they're talkin', or they're settin' still not talkin'. It don't make no difference, no difference. [...] George can tell you screwy things, and it don't matter. It's just the talking. It's just bein' with another guy. That's all.”

“İçimden eve gitmek istiyorum, dedim..”

“Onu bir kenara koyarken, anladığımı söyledim yalnızca. Ne kötüdür bilirim ama elimden bir şey gelmez. Başkası da sana yardım edemez. Yalnızca geçecek diyebilirim ama sen buna inanamazsın. Yolun açık olsun. Bu dönemde birbirimize tahammül edemesek de, sevgim seninle olsun.”

“Arkana bakma, biri arayı kapatıyor olabilir...”

“Duygularla ilişkili değilse, sözcükler anlamsızdır. İnsan bir düşüncenin sonucuna göre mi harekete geçeri yoksa duygu eylemi harekete geçirir de bazen düşünce mi onu uygulamaya döker?”

“İşe en başından başla ve hatırlayabildiğin her şeyi sonuna kadar aklında geçir. Zihnine geri geldikçe aynı şeyi baştan sona tekrarla. Bir süre sonra yorulur, parça parça silinir, çok geçmeden tümüyle kaybolur.”

“İnsan bazen o kadar kendi dışında davranır ki, size '' Bunu yapmış olamaz. Karakterine aykırı, dedirtir. Belki de değildir. Yalnızca başka bir açı söz konusu olabilir veya yukarıdan aşağıdan gelen baskılar kişinin davranış şeklini değiştirebilir.”

“Fark bir kişidedir, tek başına bir kişide... Yegane güç, bir tek sendedir. Başka hiçbir şeye güvenemezsin.”

“Güzellik neden ille de eskiye ait olsun ki?”

“İnsan düşünerek yaşamını yoluna koyabilir mi, yoksa her şeyi akışına mı bırakmalı?”

“Hakaret eşiğinin zeka ve güvenle doğrudan ilişkili olduğunu söylemişti. ''Orospu çocuğu'' sözü ancak anasından pek emin olmayan bir adam için hakaret sayılır ama insan Albert Einstein'a nasıl hakaret edebilir ki, demişti.”

“I seen too many you guys. If you had two bits in the worl', why you'd be in gettin' two shots of corn with it and suckin' the bottom of the glass.”

“In town in a whorehouse. That’s where your money’s goin’. Jesus, I seen it happen too many times. I seen too many guys with land in their head. They never get none under their hand.”

“Lennie said quietly, "It ain't no lie. We're gonna do it. Gonna get a little place an' live on the fatta the lan'.”

“Pa said, "Won't you say a few words? Ain't none of our folks ever been buried without a few words." Connie led Rose of Sharon to the graveside, she reluctant. "You got to," Connie said. "It ain't decent not to. It'll jus' be a little. The firelight fell on the grouped people, showing their faces and their eyes, dwindling on their dark clothes.All the hats were off now. The light danced, jerking over the people. Casy said, It'll be a short one." He bowed his head, and the others followed his lead. Casy said solemnly, "This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don't know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters. An' now his dead, an' that don't matter. Heard a fella tell a poem one time, an' he says 'All that lives is holy.' Got to thinkin', an' purty soon it means more than the words says. An' I woundn' pray for a ol' fella that's dead. He's awright. He got a job to do, but it's all laid out for'im an' there's on'y one way to do it. But us, we got a job to do, an' they's a thousan' ways, an' we don' know which one to take. An' if I was to pray, it'd be for the folks that don' know which way to turn. Grampa here, he got the easy straight. An' now cover 'im up and let'im get to his work." He raised his head.”

“Ah!' said Lee. 'I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time. I even anticipated your questions and I am well prepared. Any writing which has influenced the thinking and the lives of innumerable people is important. Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But ‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”

“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. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught.”

“Beans are a roof over your stomach.”

“Beans are a roof over your head.”

“Ain’t many guys travel around together,” he mused. “I don’t know why. Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”

“Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.”

“In business and in politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind--but he must get there first.”

“The words are meaningless except in terms of feeling. Does anyone act as the result of thought or does feeling stimulate action and sometimes thought implement it.”

“I guess we're all, or most of us, the wards of that nineteenth-century science which denied existence to anything it could not measure or explain. The things we couldn't explain went right on but surely not with our blessing. We did not see what we couldn't explain, and meanwhile a great part of the world was abandoned to children, insane people, fools, and mystics, who were more interested in what is than in why it is. So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic, because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.”

“I guess she's just nuts,' he said. 'And if she's nuts, a guy's got to do nuts things. You don't think you could say the hell with her?”

“He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.”

“Timshel.”

“Behind the harrows, the long seeders—twelve curved iron penes erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gears, raping methodically, raping without passion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lustedfor the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.”

“Once you have lived in New York and made it your home, no place else is good enough”

“And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, "Use it well, use it wisely.”

“The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost. That's a running sore.”

“But to find where you are going, you must know where you are, and I didn't.”

“It is a fact verified and recorded in many histories that soul capable of the greatest good is also capable of the greatest evil. Who is there more impious than backsliding priest? Who more carnal than a recent virgin? This, however, may be a matter of appearance.”

“For every man in the world functions to the best of his ability, and no one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it.”

“We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.”

“And now they were weary and frightened because they had gone against a system they did not understand and it had beaten them. They knew that the team and the wagon were worth much more. They knew the buyer man would get much more, but they didn't know how to do it. Merchandising was a secret to them.”

“A good writer always works at the impossible.”

“I wonder how many people I have looked at all my life and never really seen.”

“Communications must destroy localness, by a slow, inevitable process [...] Radio and television speech becomes standardized, perhaps better English than we have ever used. Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of accident of human frailty, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one speech [...] What I am mourning is perhaps not worth saving, but I regret its loss nevertheless”

“The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.”

“And always, if he had a little money, a man could get drunk. The hard edges gone, and the warmth. Then there was no loneliness, for a man could people his brain with friends, and he could find his enemies and destroy them.”

“There were frogs all right, thousands of them. Their voices beat the night, they boomed and barked and croaked and rattled. They sang to the stars, to the waning moon, to the waving grasses. They bellowed long songs and challenges.”

“No matter how good a man is, there's always some horse can pitch him.”

“Henry liked fun and avoided when he could any solemn or serious matter, for he confused these with sorrow.”

“Nearly everyone has had a box of secret pain, shared with no one. Will [Hamilton] had concealed his well, laughed loud, exploited perverse virtues, and never let his jealousy go wandering [...] He was always on the edge, trying to hold on to the rim of the family with what gifts he had - care, and reason, application. He kept the books, hired the attorneys, called the undertaker, and eventually paid the bills. The others didn't even know they needed him.”

“And is usually true of a man of one idea, [Charles] became obsessed.”

“Sometimes in the summer evenings they walked up the hill to watch the afterglow clinging to the tops of the western mountains and to feel the breeze drawn into the valley by the rising day-heated air. Usually they stood silently for a while and breathed in peacefulness. Since both were shy they never talked about themselves. Neither knew about the other at all.”

“The house was clean, scrubbed and immaculate, curtains washed, windows polished, but all as a man does it - the ironed curtains did not hang quite straight and there were streaks on the windows and a square showed on the table when a book was moved.”

“Mr. Trask, do you think the thoughts of people suddenly become important at a given age? Do you have sharper feelings or clearer thoughts now than when you were ten? Do you see as well, hear as well, taste as vitally?”