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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
Play
Inch
Giving
Critic
Writing
Inches
Critics
Criticism
Literature
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More quotes by John Steinbeck

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It requires self-esteem to receive-not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.
John Steinbeck
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But you can't start. Only a baby can start. You and me - why, we're all that's been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that's us. This land, this red land, is us and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can't start again.
John Steinbeck
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Only God sees the sparrow fall, but even God doesn't do anything about it.
John Steinbeck
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It doesn't matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can't understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water?
John Steinbeck
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This you may say of man - when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.
John Steinbeck
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The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side.
John Steinbeck
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Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I know beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid.
John Steinbeck
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I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments
John Steinbeck
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If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.
John Steinbeck
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I don’t mind getting smacked on the chin. I just don’t want to get nibbled to death. There’s a difference.
John Steinbeck
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A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.
John Steinbeck
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Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones.
John Steinbeck
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... a man is a very important thing-maybe more important than a star.
John Steinbeck
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And Tom brought him chicken soup until he wanted to kill him. The lore has not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either.
John Steinbeck
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Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain.
John Steinbeck
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The curious hocus-pocus of criticism I can't take seriously. It consists in squirreling up some odd phrases and then waiting for a book to come running by.
John Steinbeck
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The power of an attitude is amazing
John Steinbeck
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In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
John Steinbeck
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When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.
John Steinbeck
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I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.
John Steinbeck