John Steinbeck

But a man needs company.

— John Steinbeck

“I'm jus' pain covered with skin.”

— John Steinbeck

“Beans are a roof over your head.”

— John Steinbeck

To be alive at all is to have scars.

— John Steinbeck

A dog is a bond between strangers.

— John Steinbeck

Saints can spring from any soil.

— John Steinbeck

We could live offa the fatta the lan'.

— John Steinbeck

“It’s need that makes all the trouble.”

— John Steinbeck

... every little boy thinks he invented sin.

— John Steinbeck

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

— John Steinbeck

“I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.”

— John Steinbeck

You got to live before you can afford to die.

— John Steinbeck

“Bring new eyes to a world even new lenses and presto, new world.”

— John Steinbeck

“He smiled at her as a man might smile at a memory.”

— John Steinbeck

The clouds appeared and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore.

— John Steinbeck

Anything that just costs money is cheap.

— John Steinbeck

“She bought all new underwear. She had a horror of being found dead with mended or, worse, unmended underclothes.”

— John Steinbeck

I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.

— John Steinbeck

“Samuel said, “One day we’ll sit and you’ll lay it out on the table, neat like a solitaire deck, but now—why, you…

— John Steinbeck

You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.

— John Steinbeck

Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string…

— John Steinbeck

“A man with a beard, ordering a beer milk shake in a town where he wasn’t known—they might call the police.”

— John Steinbeck

War ... a reversal of the rules where a man is permitted to kill all the humans he can.

— John Steinbeck

“And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living.”

— John Steinbeck

“They know that ten heads lopped off will destroy them, but we are a free people; we have as many heads as…

— John Steinbeck

The new American finds his challenge and his love in the traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of…

— John Steinbeck

“I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's…

— John Steinbeck

“Another hundred years were ground up and churned, and what had happened was all muddied by the way folks wanted it to…

— John Steinbeck

“In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable... The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most…

— John Steinbeck

“Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves anymore, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps…

— John Steinbeck

“My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby...I am very fortunate in having a wife…

— John Steinbeck

They successfully combined piracy and puritanism, which aren't so unlike when you come right down to it. Both had a strong dislike…

— John Steinbeck

“It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put their faith there and let the…

— John Steinbeck

The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a…

— John Steinbeck

“The reverse is also true: many a trip continues long after movement in time and space has ceased. I remember a man…

— John Steinbeck

“The people came out of their houses and smelled the hot stinging air and covered their noses from it. And the children…

— John Steinbeck

I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers,…

— John Steinbeck

When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to catch whole for they…

— John Steinbeck

Strength and success - they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how…

— John Steinbeck

“Mack and the boys, too, spinning in their orbits. They are the Virtues, the Graces, the Beauties of the hurried mangled craziness…

— John Steinbeck