Quote

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

John Steinbeck

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Utter
Tries
Explain
Loneliness
Writer
Literature
Trying
Inexplicable

More quotes by John Steinbeck

Image
(Suicide) takes some doing, with maybe pain and maybe hell.
John Steinbeck
Image
I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.
John Steinbeck
Image
Only through immitation do we develop toward originality.
John Steinbeck
Image
The ways of sin are curious . . . I guess if a man had to shuck off everything he had, inside and out, he'd manage to hide a few little sins somewhere for his own discomfort. They're the last things we'll give up.
John Steinbeck
Image
It is astounding to find that the belly of every black and evil thing is as white as snow. And it is saddening to discover how the concealed parts of angels are leporous.
John Steinbeck
Image
Best thing is to get the words down every day. And it is time to start now.
John Steinbeck
Image
All of them had a restlessness in common.
John Steinbeck
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do.
John Steinbeck
Image
We have to make a mark, even if it's only a scribble.
John Steinbeck
Image
It requires self-esteem to receive-not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.
John Steinbeck
Image
I should have known I am the rain. I am the land and I am the rain. The grass will grow out of me in a little while.
John Steinbeck
Image
Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' I thought an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.
John Steinbeck
Image
At about 10 o'clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows and in and out of the beam flies shot like rushing stars.
John Steinbeck
Image
One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter, Beware. You will never get out of this world alive.
John Steinbeck
Image
So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda.
John Steinbeck
Image
Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.
John Steinbeck
Image
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