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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 37ae49c | Minds me of a story they tell about Willy Feeley when he was a young fella. Willy was bashful, awful bashful. Well, one day he takes a heifer over to Graves' bull. Ever'body was out but Elsie Graves, and Elsie wasn't bashful at all. Willy, he stood there turnin' red an' he couldn't even talk. Elsie says, 'I know what you come for; the bull's out in back a the barn.' Well, they took the heifer out there an' Willy an' Elsie sat on the fence t.. | heifer jokes | John Steinbeck | |
| a528274 | Let's say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out of the box, the way a baby chick escapes an egg, is it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped? | John Steinbeck | ||
| 42d5780 | You are not a man anymore. You are a soldier. Your comfort is of no importance and your life isn't of much importance. Most of your orders will be unpleasant, but that's not your business.They should've trained you for this, and not for flower-strewn streets. They should have built your soul with truth, not led along with lies. | military war | John Steinbeck | |
| 70eef0b | The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 6241e83 | That man who is more then his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis. | John Steinbeck | ||
| a836540 | The ants were busy on the ground, big black ones with shiny bodies and the little dusty quick ants. Kino watched with the detachment of God while a dusty ant frantically tried to escape the sand trap an ant lion had dug for him. He watched the ants moving, a little column of them near to his foot, and he put his foot in their path. Then the column climbed over his instep and continued on its way, and Kino left his foot there and watched the.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 5da4285 | It became his habit to creep out of bed even before his mother was awake, to slip into his clothes and to go quietly down to the barn to see Gabilan. In the grey quiet mornings when the land and the brush and the houses and the trees were silver-grey and black like a photograph negative, he stole toward the barn, past the sleeping stones and the sleeping cypress tree. The turkeys, roosting in the tree out of coyotes' reach, clicked drowsily.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 0340061 | The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if no other way, we can see the wild an reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index. | waste | John Steinbeck | |
| f816897 | At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against? | thought-provoking | John Steinbeck | |
| 403e471 | 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. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second." "Who wants to be good if he has to be h.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 802de82 | The compass simply represents the ideal, present but unachievable, and sight-steering a compromise with perfection which allows your boat to exist at all. | John Steinbeck | ||
| ee058e2 | Wishing just brought earned disappointment. | john-steinbeck | John Steinbeck | |
| 7641c4a | Curious how a place unvisited can take such hold on the mind so that the very name sets up a ringing. | trip | John Steinbeck | |
| afceb93 | Seems to me you put too much stock in the affairs of children. It probably didn't mean anything." "Yes, it meant something." Then he said, "Mr. Trask, do you think the thoughts of people suddenly become important at a given age? Do you have sharper feelings or clearer thoughts now than when you were ten? Do you see as well, hear as well, taste as vitally?" "Maybe you're right," said Adam. "It's one of the great fallacies, it seems to me," s.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| ef02b85 | There's a capacity for apetite," Samuel said, "that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfy" | John Steinbeck | ||
| a69efcf | A new country seems to follow a pattern. First come the openers, strong and brave and rather childlike. They can take care of themselves in a wilderness, but they are naive and helpless against men, and perhaps that is why they went out in the first place. When the rough edges are worn off the new land, businessmen and lawyers come in to help with the development---to solve problems of ownership, usually by removing the temptations to thems.. | religion sex | John Steinbeck | |
| 52275fb | I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 0d52555 | I hope I'm not so small-souled as to take satisfaction in being missed. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 2d38613 | In these terrific Georgians we had met more than our match. They could out-eat us, out-drink us, out-dance us, out-sing us. They had the fierce gaiety of the Italians, and the physical energy of the Burgundians. Everything they did was done with flair. They were quite different from the Russians we had met, and it is easy to see why they are so admired by the citizens of the other Soviet republics. Their energy not only survives but fattens.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| d207741 | Ah!' said Lee. 'I've wanted to tell you this for a long time. I even anticipated your questions and I am well prepared. Any writing which has influenced the thinking and the lives of innumerable people is important. Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, 'Do thou,' and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in 'Thou shalt.' Nothing they may do can interfer.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| d865db1 | She was a very small girl with a face as lovely and fresh as her son's face--a very small girl. Most of the time she knew she was smarter and prettier than anyone else. But now and then a lonely fear would fall upon her so that she seemed surrounded by a tree-tall forest of enemies. Then every thought and word and look was aimed to hurt her, and she had no place to run and no place to hide. And she would cry in panic because there was no es.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 3617c2e | A number of years ago I had some experience with being alone. For two succeeding years I was alone each winter for eight months at a stretch in the Sierra Nevada mountains on Lake Tahoe. I was the caretaker on a summer estate during the winter months when it was snowed in. And I made some observations then. As time went on I found that my reactions thickened. Ordinarily I am a whistler. I stopped whistling. I stopped conversing with my dogs.. | companionship isolation loneliness solitude travels-with-charley winter | John Steinbeck | |
| 292ef93 | They say a clean cut heals soonest. There's nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can't see or hear or touch a man, it's best to let him go | John Steinbeck | ||
| a767942 | If then this tendency toward collectivization is a mutation there is no reason to suppose it is for the better. It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well correspond to the thickening armor of the great reptiles--a tendency that can end on.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 86b5f85 | Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul? Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 29faf8f | The Lord in his wisdom gave money to very curious people, perhaps because they'd starve without. -Liza | John Steinbeck | ||
| e78fe05 | I never had, or wished for, power over you. That isn't true, of course. I wanted the greatest power of all. but not advantage, or authority. | Shirley Hazzard | ||
| b88f26a | I thought of making you and Julian real brothers." What is she talking about? Does she expect us to do a ritual thing like cut ourselves and rub blood together so we're blood brothers?" | haha lawl | Simone Elkeles | |
| bb3b5eb | No tengo excusa para estar aqui excepto el deseo de estar a su lado. A la mierda la apuesta. Quiero descubrir como puedo hacerle reir. quiero saber como hacerle llorar. Quiero saber lo que se siente si me mira como si fuera su caballero de brillante armadura. | Simone Elkeles | ||
| 9c5e84f | Listen, I didn't ask for a face and body girls find attractive. But thanks to the mixture of my parents' DNA, I've got them, and I'm not ashamed to use 'em. | humour romance young-adult-fiction young-adult-romance | Simone Elkeles | |
| 6bd7256 | No offense, but your mom is strange. She's a hit MILF, but totally off the wall." I take my hand back."Eww! Colin, you just called my mom a MILF! I'm completely grossed out!" | Simone Elkeles | ||
| 5d5e49f | This was what was left of a human individual when you took away his home,his family, his friends, his city, his country,his world: a being without context, whose past had faded, whose future was bleak, an entity stripped of name, of meaning,of the whole of life except a temporarily beating heart. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| 5536f0b | History could claw upward as well as down. The powerful could be deafened by the cries of the poor. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| 235c153 | that witchcraft requires no potions, familiar spirits, or magic wands. Language upon a silver tongue affords enchantment enough. | charm language magic | Salman Rushdie | |
| 17c5496 | You'll say things all wrong but they'll at once become American ways of saying things. You won't know shit but it'll right away become an American type of ignorance. Not belonging, that's an old American tradition, see?, that's the American way. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| f0cc8ec | Knowledge was never simply born in the human mind; it was always reborn. The relaying of wisdom from one age to the next, this cycle of rebirths: this was wisdom. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| b4f2f37 | He was the child of a father who was not his father; but also the child of a time which damaged reality so badly that nobody ever managed to put it together again; | Salman Rushdie | ||
| 5cf4565 | More seriously-and this is probably why there has been a lot of garbage talked about a lost generation-it was easy to see, all over the landscape of contemporary fiction, the devastating effect of the Thatcher years. So many of these writers wrote without hope. They had lost all ambition, all desire to to wrestle with the world. Their books dealt with tiny patches of the world, tiny pieces of human experience-a council estate, a mother, a f.. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| b7a3c4f | Otto Cone as a man of seventy-plus years jumped into an open lift shaft and died. Now this was a subject which Alicia Cone, who would readily discuss the most taboo matters refused to touch upon. Why does a survivor of the camps live forty years then complete the job the monsters didn't get done? Does great evil eventually triumph no matter how strenuously it is resisted? Does it leave a sliver of ice in the blood working its way through un.. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| 6e0928e | When you're whirling free of the mother ship, when you cut your ropes, slip your chain, step off the map, go absent without leave, scram, vamoose, whatever; suppose that it's then, and only then, that you're actually free to act! To lead the life nobody tells you how to live, or when, or why. In which nobody orders you to go forth and die for them, or for god, or comes to get you because you broke one of the rules, or because you're one of .. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| d5104ca | How does one live amongst one's fellow countrymen and countrywomen when you don't know which of them is numbered amongst the sixty-million-plus who brought the horror to power, when you can't tell who should be counted among the ninety-million-plus who shrugged and stayed home, or when your fellow Americans tell you that knowing things is elitist and they hate elites, and all you have ever had is your mind and you were brought up to believe.. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| a29c11b | Hey you, long face,' shouted an elderly gent who must have been at least seventy years old, but who was dancing through the flooded, rainy streets, waving a rolled umbrella like a sword. 'Don't you sing those Tragedy Songs round here. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| 3eac84a | To understand just one life you have to swallow the world. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| e3c25ff | Naught but love makes magic real. | Salman Rushdie |