Quote

She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do.

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
Moral
Morals
Everything
Brains
Mind
Nearly
Pleasant
Code
Dour
Beat
Presbyterian
Beats
Pinned
Brain
Presbyterians

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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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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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A man without words is a man without thought.
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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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When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.
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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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Socialism is just another form of religion, and thus delusional.
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A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.
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The break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.
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Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.
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(Suicide) takes some doing, with maybe pain and maybe hell.
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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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Three hours of writing require twenty hours of preparation. Luckily I have learned to dream about the work, which saves me some working time.
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A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.
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I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.
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Only let a man say that he will do something and a whole mechanism goes to work to stop him.
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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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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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Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life - so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we do.
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Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is--and a woman too, I guess.
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