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Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.
John Steinbeck
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John Steinbeck
Age: 66 †
Born: 1902
Born: February 27
Died: 1968
Died: December 20
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
War Correspondent
Writer
Salinas
California
John Ernst Steinbeck
Jr.
John Ernst Steinbeck
John Ernest Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr
Steinbeck
Sets
Habit
Mankind
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Literature
Baits
Kind
Bait
Men
Trap
Traps
More quotes by John Steinbeck
When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people.
John Steinbeck
I have taken as much as six years to prepare a book for writing. There is such a delirium of effort in the production of a book it's like childbirth. And, like childbirth, one forgets the pains immediately so that when you come to write another one you dare to take it up again. Some precious anesthesia sees you through.
John Steinbeck
I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction.
John Steinbeck
it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.
John Steinbeck
Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product I turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. Consequently criticism doesn't mean anything to me. As a disciplinary matter, it is too late.
John Steinbeck
Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels. They gathered mountains and valleys, rivers and whole horizons, the way a man might now gain tittle to building lots.
John Steinbeck
Strength and success - they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught.
John Steinbeck
Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.
John Steinbeck
He drank too much when he could get it, ate too much when it was there, talked too much all the time.
John Steinbeck
Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners ... California Chinese, Boston Irish, Wisconsin German, yes, Alabama Negroes, have more in common than they have apart ... The American identity is an exact and provable thing.
John Steinbeck
You're buying years of work, toil in the sun you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.
John Steinbeck
I'll want to hear,' Samuel said. 'I eat stories like grapes.
John Steinbeck
A fallow field is a sin.
John Steinbeck
(Suicide) takes some doing, with maybe pain and maybe hell.
John Steinbeck
Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all else, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.
John Steinbeck
Fella in business got to lie an' cheat, but he calls it somepin else. That's what's important. You go steal that tire an' you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business.
John Steinbeck
For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.
John Steinbeck
The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.
John Steinbeck
There is comfort in routine.
John Steinbeck
It occurs to me that just as the Carthaginians hired mercenaries to do their fighting for them, we Americans being in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat.
John Steinbeck
