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I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.

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
Rip
Rags
Nerves
Satisfied
Reader
Done

More quotes by 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.
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Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man - and the Word is with Men.
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I have taken as much as six years to prepare a book for writing. There is such a delirium of effort in the production of a book it's like childbirth. And, like childbirth, one forgets the pains immediately so that when you come to write another one you dare to take it up again. Some precious anesthesia sees you through.
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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
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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.
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The story [Henny-Penny] has the best opening in all literature-The sky is falling, cried Henny-Penny, and a piece of it fell on my tail.
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You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.
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Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
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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 straightening shyness that assails one.
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Doc tips his hat to dogs as he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him.
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I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.
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Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head. They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but it’s jus’ in their head.
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Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man.
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Men all do about the same thing when they wake up.
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There's an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort.
John Steinbeck
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I know three things will never be believed - the true, the probable, and the logical
John Steinbeck
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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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A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?
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At about 10 o'clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows and in and out of the beam flies shot like rushing stars.
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Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
John Steinbeck