Quote

If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.

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
Everyone
Stories
Hearer
Great
Rule
Make
Listen
Story
Interesting
Lasts
Last

More quotes by John Steinbeck

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... every little boy thinks he invented sin.
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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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
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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.
John Steinbeck
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..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
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How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)
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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One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter, Beware. You will never get out of this world alive.
John Steinbeck
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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
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I can still tend the rabbits, George? I didn't mean no harm, George.
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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Can you honestly love a dishonest thing?
John Steinbeck
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The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California.
John Steinbeck
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A woman holds dreadful power over a man who is in love with her but she should realize that the quality and force of his love is the index of his potential contempt and hatred.
John Steinbeck
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Doc tips his hat to dogs as he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him.
John Steinbeck
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There are some times...when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow.
John Steinbeck
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A stilted heron labored up into the air and pounded down the river.
John Steinbeck
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A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief.
John Steinbeck
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Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners ... California Chinese, Boston Irish, Wisconsin German, yes, Alabama Negroes, have more in common than they have apart ... The American identity is an exact and provable thing.
John Steinbeck
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And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man.
John Steinbeck