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Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
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
Writing
Inches
Critics
Criticism
Literature
Write
Give
Play
Inch
Giving
Critic
More quotes by 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
When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influences and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.
John Steinbeck
If you understand each other you will be kind to each other.
John Steinbeck
Oh, the strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!
John Steinbeck
It is possible, even probable, to be told a truth about a place, to accept it, to know it and at the same time not to know anything about it.
John Steinbeck
Everyone I have ever known very well has been concerned that I would eventually starve. Probably I shall. It isn't important enough to me to be an obsession.
John Steinbeck
Change was everywhere. People were gone, or changed, and that was almost like being gone.
John Steinbeck
One can't be happy as I have been for very long. There's a law against it. I have worked hard and enjoyed my work and it is the punishment of man to hate his work. Sooner or later I will have work that I hate.
John Steinbeck
Boileau said that Kings, Gods and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren't very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor.
John Steinbeck
It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary
John Steinbeck
All of them had a restlessness in common.
John Steinbeck
Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.
John Steinbeck
A fallow field is a sin.
John Steinbeck
Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody - to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.
John Steinbeck
I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton woool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it's such a sweet trap.
John Steinbeck
I've always tried out my material on my dogs first. Years ago, when my red setter chewed up the manuscript of 'Of Mice and Men,' I said at the time that the dog must have been an excellent literary critic.
John Steinbeck
..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.
John Steinbeck
In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
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 that ties past to the future.
John Steinbeck
Liza poured thick batter from a pitcher onto a soapstone griddle. The hot cakes rose like little hassocks, and small volcanoes formed and erupted on them until they were ready to be turned. A cheerful brown, they were, with tracings of darker brown. And the kitchen was full of the good sweet smell of them.
John Steinbeck
