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And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.

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
Story
Stories
People
Hearer
Interested
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There's something desirable about anything you're used to as opposed to something you're not.
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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.
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It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.
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When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people.
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Strength and success they are above morality, above criticism. It seems then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it.
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You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.
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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.
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If you understand each other you will be kind to each other.
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The break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.
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There is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp.
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How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?
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I know people who are so immersed in road maps that they never see the countryside they pass through, and others who, having traced a route, are held to it as though held by flanged wheels to rails.
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Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God.
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You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.
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Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page a day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
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Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.
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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.
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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.
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Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I know beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid.
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A fallow field is a sin.
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