John Steinbeck (1902 – 1968)
One of the best-known and most widely read American writers of the 20th century.
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.
The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.
You ain't worth a greased lack pin to ram you into hell.
The misery stayed, not thought about but aching away, and sometimes I would have to ask myself, Why do I ache? Men can get used to anything, but it takes time.
You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.
He doesn't belong to a race clever enough to split the atom but not clever enough to live at peace with itself.
In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
For the first time I am working on a book that is not limited and that will take every bit of experience and thought and feeling that I have.
In my heart there may be doubt that I deserve the Nobel award over other men of letters whom I hold in respect and reverence but there is no question of my pleasure and pride in having it for myself.
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.
Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.
One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter: Beware. You will never get out of this world alive.
In every bit of honest writing in the world
there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. there is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.
Well, God knows he don't need any brains to buck barley bags. But don't you try to put nothing over, Milton. I got my eye on you.
I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love.
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 passionately believe in the perfectibility of man, has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
I seen too many guys with land in their head. They never get none under their hand.
"It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success."
What good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics.
"What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster."