I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.
Catalog
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American author of 27 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Red Pony (1937). The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies. The winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been called "a giant of American letters". His works are widely read abroad and many of his works are considered classics of Western literature. Most of Steinbeck's work is set in southern and central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists. 2Early life Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, Californi
To be alive at all is to have scars.
I guess I’m trying to say, grab anything that goes by. It may not come around again.
People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don’t dream at all.
I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.
Maybe not having time to think is not having the wish to think.
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.
Sometimes it's great fun to be silly, like children playing statues and dying of laughter. And sometimes being silly breaks the even pace and lets you get a new start.
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.
There's something desirable about anything you're used to as opposed to something you're not.
A man is a lonely thing.
It is odd how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place — everyone must have one, although I have never heard of a man tell of it.
Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is — and a woman too, I guess.
A little hope, even hopeless hope, never hurt anybody.
All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.
They successfully combined piracy and puritanism, which aren't so unlike when you come right down to it. Both had a strong dislike for opposition and both had a roving eye for other people's property.
"Ellen, only last night, asked, 'Daddy, when will we be rich?' But I did not say to her what I know: 'We will be rich soon, and you who handle poverty badly will handle riches equally badly.' And that is true. In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the…
When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you got two new people. Maybe that means — hell, it's complicated.
"I'm sorry," Ethan said. "You have taught me something — maybe three things, rabbit footling mine. Three things will never be believed — the true, the probable, and the logical. I know now where to get the money to start my fortune."
It is strange how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place — everyone must have one, although I never heard a man tell of it.