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To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.
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
Soul
Foolish
Stricken
Without
Ridiculous
Variation
Must
Honesty
Monstrous
Men
Conscience
Norm
Seem
Monster
Forget
Criminal
Born
Monsters
Seems
Criminals
More quotes by John Steinbeck
... a man is a very important thing-maybe more important than a star.
John Steinbeck
Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is--and a woman too, I guess.
John Steinbeck
I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton woool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it's such a sweet trap.
John Steinbeck
I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt- and there is the story of mankind.
John Steinbeck
A study of animal communities has this advantage: they are merely what they are, for anyone to see who will and can look clearly they cannot complicate the picture by worded idealisms, by saying one thing and being another here the struggle is unmasked and the beauty is unmasked.
John Steinbeck
A journey is a person in itself no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policies and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip a trip takes us.
John Steinbeck
Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones.
John Steinbeck
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
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.
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There are places in this world where fable, myth, preconception, love, longing or prejudice step in and so distort a cool, clear appraisal that a kind of high colored magical confusion takes permanent hold...Surely Texas is such a place.
John Steinbeck
Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.
John Steinbeck
Once I knew the City very well, spent my attic days there, while others were being a lost generation in Paris, I fledged in San Francisco, climbed its hills. slept in its parks, worked on its docks, marched and shouted in its revolts~ It had been to me in the days of my poverty and it did not resent my temporary solvency.
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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
Why do men like me want sons? he wondered. It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance at life like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone.
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All we got is the family unbroke.
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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.
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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.
John Steinbeck
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
For many years we have suckled on fear and fear alone, and there is no good product of fear.
John Steinbeck
Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts.
John Steinbeck
