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c84cf4e
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You don't even know where I'm going." "I don't care. I'd like to go anywhere."
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wanderlust
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John Steinbeck |
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7e36dd1
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The Western States nervous under the beginning change. Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, New Mexico, Arizona, California. A single family moved from the land. Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants the land. The land company--that's the bank when it has land --wants tractors, not families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor were ours it would be good--not min..
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tom-joad
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John Steinbeck |
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0ef6b25
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And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit th..
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owners
the-grapes-of-wrath
john-steinbeck
revolt
land
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John Steinbeck |
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cc63619
|
Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitant are, as the man o..
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John Steinbeck |
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6be14cc
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Luck, you see, brings bitter friends.
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John Steinbeck |
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b2ceab8
|
In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms
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John Steinbeck |
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6a5265b
|
Yes, you will. And I will warn you now that not their blood but your suspicion might build evil in them. They will be what you expect of them...I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb." "You can't make a race horse of a pig." "No," said Samuel, "but you can make a very fast pig."
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John Steinbeck |
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159e0de
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To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.
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John Steinbeck |
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1488dfa
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The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.
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John Steinbeck |
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88a13e4
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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 short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember..
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John Steinbeck |
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0fdd93f
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I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments
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government
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John Steinbeck |
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c154ed2
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There are two kinds of people in the world, observers and non-observers...
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John Steinbeck |
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855dd25
|
When you're a child you're the center of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They're only ghosts furnished for you to talk to.
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John Steinbeck |
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43c5e44
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Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.
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John Steinbeck |
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74bd136
|
I'm jus' pain covered with skin.
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John Steinbeck |
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20f6d17
|
He was born in fury and he lived in lightning. Tom came headlong into life. He was a giant in joy and enthusiasms. He didn't discover the world and its people, he created them. When he read his father's books, he was the first. He lived in a world shining and fresh and as uninspected as Eden on the sixth day. His mind plunged like a colt in a happy pasture, and when later the world put up fences, he plunged against the wire, and when the fi..
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John Steinbeck |
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5457f52
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It's because I haven't courage,' said Samuel. 'I could never quite take the responsibility. When the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called his name - but I did not. There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It's not an uncommon disease. But it's nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.' 'I'd think there are degrees of greatness,' Adam said. 'I don't think so,..
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john-steinbeck
greatness
son
mediocrity
father
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John Steinbeck |
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c3886a9
|
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the peop..
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John Steinbeck |
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0fb9d54
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We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.
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John Steinbeck |
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c7ae428
|
Women can change better'n a man," Ma said soothingly. "Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head." "Man, he lives in jerks-baby born an' a man dies, an' that's a jerk-gets a farm and looses his farm, an' that's a jerk. Woman, its all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain't gonna die out. People is goin' on-changin' a little, maybe,..
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John Steinbeck |
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dc9148c
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And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.
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John Steinbeck |
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cb3daf2
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George's voice became deeper. He repeated his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before. 'Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch. They ain't got nothing to look ahead to.
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John Steinbeck |
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f1775ed
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Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.
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John Steinbeck |
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896ce73
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And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.
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humor
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John Steinbeck |
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ca0f96e
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This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning--from "I" to "we". If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I", and cuts you off forever from the "we". "
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John Steinbeck |
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57be36a
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He learned that when people are very poor they still have something to give and the impulse to give it.
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John Steinbeck |
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f99b857
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I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn't ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.
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John Steinbeck |
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edaed78
|
These too are of a burning color--not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were liquid and could raise a cream, that golden cream might be like the color of the poppies.
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John Steinbeck |
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f304e76
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You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.
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John Steinbeck |
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058a2c4
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There are some times...when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow.
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John Steinbeck |
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24281c1
|
I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer -- and what trees and seasons smelled like -- how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.
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time
plants
landscape
memory
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John Steinbeck |
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b1e2036
|
Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'--I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry n' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build--why, I'll be there.
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John Steinbeck |
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7498079
|
As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.
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writing
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John Steinbeck |
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e166f26
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Guys like us got nothing to look ahead to.
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men
look-ahead
steinbeck
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John Steinbeck |
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20242c6
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It is a time of quiet joy, the sunny morning. When the glittery dew is on the mallow weeds, each leaf holds a jewel which is beautiful if not valuable. This is no time for hurry or for bustle. Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.
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John Steinbeck |
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c414470
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I'm gettin' tired way past where sleep rests me.
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John Steinbeck |
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2c7d00c
|
He said, "I am a man," and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god."
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John Steinbeck |
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bb0e10f
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She wasn't happy, but then she wasn't unhappy. She wasn't anything. But I don't believe anyone is a nothing. There has to be something inside, if only to keep the skin from collapsing. This vacant eye, listless hand, this damask cheek dusted like a doughnut with plastic powder, had to have a memory or a dream.
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John Steinbeck |
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02a2dba
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Then it don' matter. Then I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be ever'where - wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' - I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they b..
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the-grapes-of-wrath
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John Steinbeck |
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dbca172
|
If a story is not about the hearer he [or she] will not listen . . . A great lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting--only the deeply personal and familiar.
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John Steinbeck |
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6453fb8
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Lennie begged, "Le's do it now. Le's get that place now." "Sure right now. I gotta. We gotta."
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John Steinbeck |
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9815485
|
You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.
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perception
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John Steinbeck |
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8ed2fe7
|
It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods.
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John Steinbeck |
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58002b0
|
And her joy was nearly like sorrow.
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John Steinbeck |