Writing Quotes by John Steinbeck

I am writing this from what we Americans call Yurrp. In Yurrp writers are taken as seriously as Lana Turner's legs are…

— John Steinbeck

I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a…

— John Steinbeck

“In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each…

— John Steinbeck

“I learned to write nice as hell. Birds an' stuff like that, too; not just word writin'. My ol' man'll be sore…

— John Steinbeck

I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry…

— John Steinbeck

“I was writing of something I did not know about, and it seems to me that in a so-called writer this is…

— John Steinbeck

After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he…

— John Steinbeck

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page a…

— John Steinbeck

When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know…

— John Steinbeck

The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.

— John Steinbeck

Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know,…

— John Steinbeck

“A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering.…

— John Steinbeck

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

— John Steinbeck

“When you are writing, you must treat it as the most important thing in the world, even when you know it is…

— John Steinbeck

“The only good writer was a dead writer.”

— John Steinbeck

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

— John Steinbeck

To finish is sadness to a writer — a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But…

— John Steinbeck

I start out to write five days a week, and then it runs to six days and finally seven. Then, eventually, that…

— John Steinbeck

I nearly always write just as I nearly always breathe. - John Steinbeck

— John Steinbeck

I nearly always write — just as I nearly always breathe.

— John Steinbeck

“To finish is a sadness to a writer- a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. The…

— John Steinbeck

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.

— John Steinbeck

“The good story lay in half-told things which must be filled in out of the hearer’s own experience.”

— John Steinbeck

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper.

— John Steinbeck

What some people find in religion a writer may find in his craft...a kind of breaking through to glory.

— John Steinbeck