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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
Great
Rule
Make
Listen
Story
Interesting
Lasts
Last
Everyone
Stories
Hearer
More quotes by John Steinbeck
I've always tried out my material on my dogs first. Years ago, when my red setter chewed up the manuscript of 'Of Mice and Men,' I said at the time that the dog must have been an excellent literary critic.
John Steinbeck
When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people.
John Steinbeck
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.
John Steinbeck
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.
John Steinbeck
Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
John Steinbeck
Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world, of all living things.
John Steinbeck
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
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
Some people there are who, being grown forget the horrible task of learning to read. It is perhaps the greatest single effort that the human undertakes, and he must do it as a child.
John Steinbeck
Books are the best friends you can have they inform you, and entertain you, and they don't talk back.
John Steinbeck
He learned that when people are very poor they still have something to give and the impulse to give it.
John Steinbeck
The dairy man had a Ph.D. in mathematics, and he must have had some training in philosophy. He liked what he was doing and he didn't want to be somewhere else - one of the few contented people I met in my whole journey.
John Steinbeck
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
There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.
John Steinbeck
The sale of souls to gain the whole world is completely voluntary and almost unanimous...but not quite.
John Steinbeck
The lies we tell about our duty and our purposes, the meaningless words of science and philosophy, are walls that topple before a bewildered little ‘why’.
John Steinbeck
All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight.
John Steinbeck
Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.
John Steinbeck
I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble.
John Steinbeck
Socialism is just another form of religion, and thus delusional.
John Steinbeck
