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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
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More quotes by John Steinbeck

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It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.
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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A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.
John Steinbeck
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Yes, you should talk, he said. Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth.
John Steinbeck
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Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world
John Steinbeck
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But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.
John Steinbeck
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It is a nice thing to be working and believing in my work again. I hope I can keep the drive. I only feel whole and well when it is this way.
John Steinbeck
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They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)
John Steinbeck
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One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.
John Steinbeck
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The last clear definite function of men—muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need—this is man.
John Steinbeck
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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
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Let's say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out of the box, the way a baby chick escapes an egg, is it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped?
John Steinbeck
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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
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He can kill anything for need but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure.
John Steinbeck
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An ocean without unnamed monsters would be like sleep without dreams.
John Steinbeck
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A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.
John Steinbeck
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Well, I git enough sorrow. I like to git away from it.
John Steinbeck
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Books are the best friends you can have they inform you, and entertain you, and they don't talk back.
John Steinbeck
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Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.
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