Search quotes

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Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
63f4f03	New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it - once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.		new-york-city	John Steinbeck
f2f8dab	I think I love you, Cal." -Abra I'm not good." -Cal Because you're not good." -Abra"			John Steinbeck
92bf56d	I'm in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love. And it's difficult to analyze love when you're in it.			John Steinbeck
8299310	Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' I thought an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.			John Steinbeck
ad29349	We can shoot rockets into space but we can't cure anger or discontent.			John Steinbeck
fe4b85e	How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.			John Steinbeck
be152bd	Sure, cried the tenant men,but it's our land...We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it's no good, it's still ours....That's what makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it." "We're sorry. It's not us. It's the monster. The bank isn't like a man." "Yes, but the bank is only made of men." "No, you're wrong there--quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates ..			John Steinbeck
81fdbd3	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.		goodbye thoughtful	John Steinbeck
b0a20d4	There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.			John Steinbeck
de480f0	When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.		writing persistence motivational failure	John Steinbeck
7630140	What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can only read a few and those perhaps not accurately.			John Steinbeck
3a1af91	Don't you dare take the lazy way. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't let me catch you doing it! Now -- look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do.		excuses family	John Steinbeck
6700bd3	In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love...We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is..			John Steinbeck
87c7303	Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.			John Steinbeck
008ad25	Cannery Row's] inhabitants 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.			John Steinbeck
3c093bf	Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no..		time	John Steinbeck
187d9c4	No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.			John Steinbeck
593ba37	We know what we got, and we don't care whether you know it or not.			John Steinbeck
f7270c1	Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.		people poor kind	John Steinbeck
c3a96ad	They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)			John Steinbeck
751c068	It is the hour of pearl--the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.		monterey steinbeck	John Steinbeck
cd562a6	And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.			John Steinbeck
7ff842c	Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.		heroic greatnesstness triumph victory	John Steinbeck
c11dafb	Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.			John Steinbeck
bb8a661	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. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can..			John Steinbeck
95f3f30	After a while you'll think no thought the others do not think. You'll know no word the others can't say. And you'll do things because the others do them. You'll feel the danger in any difference whatever-a danger to the crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men...Once in a while there is a man who won't do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference. They'..			John Steinbeck
2696ef1	We could live offa the fatta the lan'.			John Steinbeck
1177f7e	I can still tend the rabbits, George? I didn't mean no harm, George.			John Steinbeck
a6cb50e	I'll want to hear,' Samuel said. 'I eat stories like grapes.			John Steinbeck
806093b	But you must give him some sign, some sign that you love him... or he'll never be a man. All his life he'll feel guilty and alone unless you release him.			John Steinbeck
5ae2954	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!			John Steinbeck
641e209	The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.			John Steinbeck
c4b3aed	Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, ..			John Steinbeck
5407155	Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.		time	John Steinbeck
6aaef7d	The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels.		escape church	John Steinbeck
73ffa32	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."		scared	John Steinbeck
88cf4fb	Cathy's lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or responsibility, and they were used for profit. Most liars are tripped up either because they forget what they have told or because the lie is suddenly faced with an incontrovertible truth. But Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew t..		lying lies liars	John Steinbeck
eff8a02	For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.			John Steinbeck
91a167c	I wonder how many people I have looked at all my life and never really seen.			John Steinbeck
55e5b6e	You can boast about anything if it's all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.			John Steinbeck
ac015ae	Sometimes, a lie is told in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost.			John Steinbeck
44801e4	Look now -- in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, "use it well, use it wisely." We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you f..		soldiers	John Steinbeck
2451710	He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.		laughter inspirational	John Steinbeck
2d737ad	Failure is a state of mind. It's like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.			John Steinbeck

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