Quote

Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.

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
Wave
Passages
Time
Rise
Waves
Beats
Turning
Sea
Complexes
Sun
Complex
Circling
Rocks
Near
Addition
Fall
Beat
Passage
Place
Seasons
Tides

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A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive.
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A little hope, even hopeless hope, never hurt anybody.
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Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody - to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.
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What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can only read a few and those perhaps not accurately.
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You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.
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Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it.
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I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.
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I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background.
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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.
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The last clear definite function of man — muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need — this is man.
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Out of all this struggle a good thing is going to grow. That makes it worthwhile.
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You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.
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All we got is the family unbroke.
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it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.
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And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, Use it well, use it wisely.
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Don't you dare take the lazy way. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't let me catch you doing it! Now -- look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do.
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With all our horrors and faults, somewhere in us there is a shining.
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Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.
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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)
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In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
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