“When he read his father’s books, he was the first. He lived in a world shining and fresh and as uninspected as… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business. — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“Let’s get it over and the door closed shut on it! Let’s close it like a book and go on reading! New… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“Unless a writer's capable of solitude, he should leave books alone and go into the theater.” — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
Books are the best friends you can have; they inform you, and entertain you, and they don't talk back. — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
For the first time I am working on a book that is not limited and that will take every bit of experience… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“If only I wouldn’t take this book so seriously. It is just a book after all, and a book is very dead… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“Then there were his education and his reading, the books he bought and borrowed, his knowledge of things that could not be… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“In the books of some memories it was the best time that ever sloshed over the world - the old time, the… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“He did not know, and perhaps this doctor did. And he could not take the chance of pitting his certain ignorance against… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise - the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
A woman journalist in England asked me why Americans usually wrote about their childhood and a past that happened only in imagination,… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“Samuel said that Tom was quavering over greatness, trying to decide whether he could take the cold responsibility. Samuel knew his son’s… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three [great teachers] did not… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
Prayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork. — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“And now submarines are armed with mass murder, our silly, only way of deterring mass murder.” — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“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… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“He was forever inventing a new way of doing an old thing and doing it better and quicker, but he never in his whole… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“You come back a changed man. Samuel, you don’t change him. He changes you. I can see the look of him in your face.”… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
At about 10 o'clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows and in and out… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house,… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
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… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image