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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 77d7823 | It is strange to an American that the English, who love dogs and rarely eat them, nevertheless are brutal with vegetables. It is just one of those national differences which are unfathomable. | John Steinbeck | ||
| a0c8655 | Samuel said that Tom was quavering over greatness, trying to decide whether he could take the cold responsibility. Samuel knew his son's quality and felt the potential of violence, and it frightened him, for Samuel had no violence--even when he hit Adam Trask with his fist he had no violence. And the books that came into the house, some of them secretly--well, Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way .. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 8475559 | The Pacific is my home ocean; I knew it first, grew up on its shore, collected marine animals along the coast. I know its moods, its color, its nature. | marine nature ocean pacific-ocean sea | John Steinbeck | |
| ccb22d1 | I think perhaps Liza accepted the world as she accepted the Bible, with all of its paradoxes and its reverses. She did not like death but she knew it existed, and when it came it did not surprise her. Samuel may have thought and played and philosophized about death, hut he did not really believe in it. His world did not have death as a member. He, and all around him, was immortal. When real death came it was an outrage, a denial of the immo.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| f7877b4 | I'm gonna try to learn. Gonna learn why folks walk in the grass, gonna hear 'em talk, gonna hear 'em sing. Gonna listen to kids eatin' mush. Gonna hear husban' an' wife a-poundin' the mattress in the night. Gonna eat with 'em an' learn. Gonna lay in the grass, open an' honest with anybody that'll have me. Gonna cuss an' swear an' hear the poetry of folks talkin'. All that's holy, all that's what I didn't understan'. All them things is good .. | John Steinbeck | ||
| a411f25 | He has come to be the great man he thought he wanted to be. If this is true, then he is not a man. He is still a little boy and wants the moon. | John Steinbeck | ||
| e3a91c7 | You can only fight Fate so far, and when you give in to it you're very strong; because all of your force flows in one direction. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 3739292 | Liza had a finely developed sense of sin Idleness was a sin, and card playing, which was a kind of idleness to her. She was suspicious of fun whether it involved dancing or singing or even laughter. She felt that people having a good time were wide open to the devil. And this was a shame, for Samuel was a laughing man, but I guess Samuel was wide open to the devil. His wife protected him whenever she could. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 3cbf1df | A plan once made and visualized becomes a reality along with other realities- never to be destroyed but easily to be attacked. Thus Kino's future was real, but having set it up, other forces were set up to destroy it, and this he knew, so that he had to prepare to meet the attack. And this Kino knew also- that the gods do not love men's plans, and the gods do not love success unless it comes by accident. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 807be3e | Dessie's] shop was a unique institution in Salinas. It was a woman's world. Here all the rules, and the fears that created the iron rules, went down. The door was closed to men. It was a sanctuary where women could be themselves- smelly, wanton, mystic, conceited, truthful, and interested. The whalebone corsets came off at Dessie's, the sacred corsets that moulded and warped woman-flesh into goddess-flesh. At Dessie's they were women who we.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| cc04294 | American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash -- all of them -- surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered with rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. 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.. | garbage | John Steinbeck | |
| f55b863 | And now the group was welded to one thing, one unit, so that in the dark the eyes of the people were inward, and their minds played in other times, and their sadness was like rest, like sleep. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 7194947 | Aron said slowly. "I wouldn't want to know that. I'd like to know why you do it. You're always at something. I just wonder why you do it. I wonder what's it good for." A pain pierced Cal's heart. His planning suddenly seemed mean and dirty to him. He knew that his brother had found him out. And he felt a longing for Aron to love him. He felt lost and hungry and he didn't know what to do." | John Steinbeck | ||
| bdcd4c2 | It was not a safe thing to lead Joe into temptation; he had no resistance to it at all. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 6bb2f34 | Blaisedell, the poet, had said to him, 'You love beer so much. I'll bet some day you'll go in and order a beer milk shake.' It was a simple piece of foolery but it had bothered Doc ever since. He wondered what a beer milk shake would taste like. The idea gagged him but he couldn't let it alone. It cropped up every time he had a glass of beer. Would it curdle the milk? Would you add sugar? It was like a shrimp ice cream. Once the thing got i.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| ca6fbb7 | There's no thing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of a postage stamp. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 7b4df40 | And he saw the right evening star reflected in her eyes, and he saw the black cloud reflected in her eyes. | John Steinbeck | ||
| bd3e078 | But you said you did not love our father. How can you have faith in him if you didn't love him?" "Maybe that's the reason," Adam said slowly, feeling his way. "Maybe if I had loved him I would have been jealous of him. You were. Maybe--maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure--never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself? I can see it pretty clearly. I can see how you lo.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| dc0acdf | You're pretty full of yourself. You're marveling at the tragic spectacle of Caleb Trask--Caleb the magnificent, the unique. Caleb whose suffering should have its Homer. Did you ever think of yourself as a snot-nose kid--mean sometimes, incredibly generous sometimes? Dirty in your habits, and curiously pure in your mind. Maybe you have a little more energy than most, just energy, but outside of that you're very like all the other snot-nose k.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 29e925a | At last he said, "Did you come out of the big mountains?" Gitano shook his head slowly. "No, I walked down the Salinas Valley." The afternoon thought would not let Joey go. "Did you ever go into the big mountains back there?" The old dark eyes grew fixed, and their light turned inward on the years that were living in Gitano's head." | description | John Steinbeck | |
| c8f15e7 | There is a curious idea among unscientific men that in scientific writing there is a common plateau of perfectionism. Nothing could be more untrue. The reports of biologists are the measure, not of the science, but of the men themselves. There are as few scientific giants as any other kind. In some reports it is impossible, because of inept expression, to relate the descriptions to the living animals. In some papers collecting places are so.. | scientists writers-on-writing | John Steinbeck | |
| 36db348 | If on'y they didn' tell me I got to get off, why, I'd prob'y be in California right now a-eatin' grapes an a-pickin' an orange when I wanted. But them sons-a-bitches says I got to get off-an', Jesus Christ, a man can't, when he's tol' to! | John Steinbeck | ||
| 37b40fc | There would come a time in our poverty when we needed a party. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 07f3d57 | And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 0bdf5c2 | Adam Trask to Cathy: "You know about the ugliness in people. You showed me the pictures. You use all the sad, weak parts of a man, and God knows he has them." ... "But you-yes, that's right- you don't know about the rest. You don't believe I brought you the letter because I don't want your money. You don't believe I love you. And the men who come to you here with their ugliness, the men in the pictures- you don't believe those men could hav.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| d415724 | Yellowstone National Park is no more representative of America than is Disneyland. | John Steinbeck | ||
| e2147a9 | Just come, | John Steinbeck | ||
| 60ab41b | He smiled at her as a man might smile at a memory. Then he went out and closed the door gently behind him. Kate sat staring at the door. Her eyes were desolate. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 0d7104f | A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well--or ill? | John Steinbeck | ||
| b410deb | 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," said Lee, "that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to a man." "And memory." "Yes, memory. Without that, time would be unarmed .. | John Steinbeck | ||
| b75865f | Maybe his wealth was entirely in unpaid bills. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 5631fbc | Dessie's friends were good and loyal but they were human, and humans love to feel good and they hate to feel bad. | John Steinbeck | ||
| c1a329c | I want to see the whole picture - as nearly as I can. I don't want to put on the blinders of 'good' and 'bad', and limit my vision. If I used the term 'good' on a thing I'd lose my license to inspect it, because there might be bad in it. Don't you see? I want to be able to look at the whole thing. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 6187215 | You must name a thing before you can note it on your hand drawn map. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 788e974 | I'd think there are degrees of greatness," Adam said. "I don't think so," said Samuel. "That would be like saying there is a little bigness. No. I believe when you come to that responsibility - that hugeness - you are alone to make your choice. On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I'm glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what rewar.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| dbf5abf | Beside them, little pot-bellied men in light suits and panama hats; clean, pink men with puzzled, worried eyes, with restless eyes. Worried because formulas do not work out; hungry for security and yet sensing its disappearance from the earth. In their lapels the insignia of lodges and service clubs, places where they can go and, by a weight of numbers of little worried men, reassure themselves that business is noble and not the curious rit.. | life men restless security-fear | John Steinbeck | |
| d273815 | He went to his own dark house and lighted the lamps and set fire in the stove. The clock wound by Elizabeth still ticked, storing in its spring the pressure of her hand, and the wool socks she had hung to dry over the stove screen were still damp. These were vital parts of Elizabeth that were not dead yet. Joseph pondered slowly over it. Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is t.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| d0ccf3a | There is no knowing how or why dread comes on a parent. Of course, many times apprehension arises when there is no reason for it at all. And it comes most often to the parents of only children, parents who have indulged in black dreams of loss. | John Steinbeck | ||
| ba8854e | How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? | John Steinbeck | ||
| 50d34ea | He thought dawdling, protective thoughts, sitting under the lamp, but he knew that pretty soon his name would be called and he would have to go up before the bench with himself as judge and his own crimes as jurors. And his name was called, shrilly in his ears. His mind walked in to face the accusers: Vanity, which charged him with being ill dressed and dirty and vulgar; and Lust, slipping him the money for his whoring; Dishonesty, to make .. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 2fee739 | I'll tell ya one thing -- the jail house is jus' a kind a way a drivin' a guy slowly nuts. See? An' they go nuts, an' you see 'em an' hear 'em, an' pretty soon you don' know if you're nuts or not. When they get to screamin' in the night sometimes you think it's you doin' the screamin'--an' sometimes it is. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 680636e | There's a passage in John Steinbeck's "East of Eden" that does a pretty good job describing California's rainfall patterns: The water came in a 30-year cycle. There would be five to six wet and wonderful years when there might be 19 to 25 inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of 12 to 16 inches of rain. And then the dry years would come ..." | climate rain weather | John Steinbeck | |
| fccc936 | The Carmel is a lovely little river. It isn't very long but in its course it has everything a river should have. It rises in the mountains, and tumbles down a while, runs through shallows, is damned to make a lake, spills over the dam, crackles among round boulders, wanders lazily under sycamores, spills into pools where trout live, drops in against banks where crayfish live. In the winter it becomes a torrent, a mean little fierce river, a.. | rivers | John Steinbeck | |
| 107c3ea | I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry years too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches of rain. And then the dry years would come, and so.. | John Steinbeck |