![]() The Pearl (1992, pg. 3) |
It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
John SteinbeckThe discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.
John SteinbeckIt is a nice thing to be working and believing in my work again. I hope I can keep the drive. I only feel whole and well when it is this way.
John SteinbeckFor 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.
John SteinbeckIdeas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John SteinbeckAll hell has broken loose. I admit our Russian is limited, but we can say hello, come in, you are beautiful, oh no you don't. … 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. Something has slipped badly.
John SteinbeckWriters are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
John SteinbeckThe profession of book-writing makes horse-racing seem like a solid, stable business.
John SteinbeckIn utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
John SteinbeckThe 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.
John SteinbeckSyntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
John SteinbeckWe could live offa the fatta the lan’.
John SteinbeckBooks ain't no good. A guy needs somebody — to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.
John SteinbeckI seen too many guys with land in their head. They never get none under their hand.
John SteinbeckYou ain't worth a greased lack pin to ram you into hell.
John SteinbeckI am a dog.
John SteinbeckThe techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost.
John SteinbeckWhen the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.
John SteinbeckAnd now, our submarines are armed with mass murder, our silly, only way of deterring mass murder.
John SteinbeckOh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I know beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid.
John SteinbeckThe mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if in no other way, we can see the wild and reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index.
John SteinbeckI wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.
John SteinbeckWe 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.
John SteinbeckLife could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.
John SteinbeckSectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.
John SteinbeckA question is a trap, and an answer your foot in it.
John SteinbeckAnd this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.
John SteinbeckAnd this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.
John SteinbeckA sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.
John Steinbeck