“I seen turtles all my life. They’re always goin’ someplace. They always seem to want to get there.” — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself. — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but I do have a choice of how I do it.” — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
One must withdraw for a time from life in order to set down that picture. — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life - so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“And in my own life I am not willing to trade quality for quantity.” — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“It is a hard thing to leave any deeply routined life, even if you hate it.” — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
I have wondered why is it that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death that… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question:… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“Thy life is not thine own to govern, Danny, for it controls other lives. See how thy friends suffer! Spring to life,… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“Critics are the eunuchs of literature. They stand by in envious awe while the whole man and his partner demonstrate the art… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
But you must give him some sign, some sign that you love him... or he'll never be a man. All his life… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“You got to have patience. Why, Tom—us people will go on livin’ when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we’re the… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influences and genius, if he dies unloved his life must… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
Why do men like me want sons? he wondered. It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
You are not a man anymore. You are a soldier. Your comfort is of no importance and your life isn't of much… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God. Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
Why, Tom - us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live.… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“Down towards one end of the village, among the small houses, a dog complained about the cold and the loneliness. He raised… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“Seems like our life's over and done." "No, it ain't," Ma smiled. "It ain't, Pa. An' that's one more thing a woman… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“Here you play in the street, little chicken. Some day an automobile will run over you; and if it kills you, that… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“I guess we're all, or most of us, the wards of that nineteenth-century science which denied existence to anything it could not… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“I can’t tell you how to live your life,” Samuel said, “although I do be telling you how to live it. I… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“Who doesn't like to be a center for concern? A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“It wasn’t very long until all the land in the barren hills near King City and San Ardo was taken up, and… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
I know a little bit about a great many things and not enough about any one to make a living in these… — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
A wife is like a children's movie; always under-appreciated and without either, life would be incomplete. — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“I wonder how many people I have looked at all my life and never really seen.” — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“You have defied not the pearl buyers, but the whole structure, the whole way of life, and I am afraid for you” — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“It's like a life--so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we do.” — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world, of all living things. — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living.” — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter Beware. You will never get out of this world alive. — John Steinbeck Copy Share Image
“A dying organism is often observed to be capable of extraordinary endurance and strength. ... When any living organism is attacked, its… — 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
“And now submarines are armed with mass murder, our silly, only way of deterring mass murder.” — John Steinbeck Copy Share
“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
“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
“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
I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments — John Steinbeck Copy Share
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
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
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
“Suddenly he knew joy and sorrow felted into one fabric. Courage and fear were one thing too. He found that he had started to… — John Steinbeck Copy Share
I am writing this from what we Americans call Yurrp. In Yurrp writers are taken as seriously as Lana Turner's legs are in America… — John Steinbeck Copy Share
I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a satisfaction like… — John Steinbeck Copy Share
