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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
Write
Give
Play
Inch
Giving
Critic
Writing
Inches
Critics
Criticism
Literature

More quotes by John Steinbeck

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It don't cost money to ask.
John Steinbeck
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With all our horrors and faults, somewhere in us there is a shining.
John Steinbeck
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Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
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A little hope, even hopeless hope, never hurt anybody.
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Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man.
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A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.
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The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.
John Steinbeck
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The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.
John Steinbeck
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I had been practicing for the Depression a long time. I wasn't involved with loss. I didn't have money to lose, but in common with millions I did dislike hunger and cold.
John Steinbeck
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Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.
John Steinbeck
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Failure is a state of mind. It's like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.
John Steinbeck
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She wasn't happy, but then she wasn't unhappy. She wasn't anything. But I don't believe anyone is a nothing. There has to be something inside, if only to keep the skin from collapsing. This vacant eye, listless hand, this damask cheek dusted like a doughnut with plastic powder, had to have a memory or a dream.
John Steinbeck
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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
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Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
John Steinbeck
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There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.
John Steinbeck
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How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.
John Steinbeck
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But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist-or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.
John Steinbeck
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A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory
John Steinbeck
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There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen.
John Steinbeck
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Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.
John Steinbeck