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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
Rags
Nerves
Satisfied
Reader
Done
Rip

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He can kill anything for need but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure.
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I have no interest in the printed word. I would continue to write if there were no writing and no print. I put my words down for a matter of memory. They are more made to be spoken than to be read.
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I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere.
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I think bullfights are for men who aren't very brave and wish they were.
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He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.
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We can shoot rockets into space but we can't cure anger or discontent.
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In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration.
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Do you think it's funny to be so serious when I'm not even out of high school?' she asked. 'I don't see how it could be any other way,' said Lee. 'Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time.
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A strange species we are, We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick. --John Steinbeck to Adlai Stevenson
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But you must give him some sign, some sign that you love him... or he'll never be a man. All his life he'll feel guilty and alone unless you release him.
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This you may say of man - when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.
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We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.
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I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction.
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I should have known I am the rain. I am the land and I am the rain. The grass will grow out of me in a little while.
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I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
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For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.
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Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world, of all living things.
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A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
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Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.
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We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.
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