Quote

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.

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
Think
Funny
Later
Thinking
Comes
Asked
Like
Death
Serious
School
Wisdom
Sometimes
High
Even
Race
Mad
Way
Lasts
Teeth
Time
Last
Laughter

More quotes by John Steinbeck

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To the heavens on the wings of a pig.
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What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can only read a few and those perhaps not accurately.
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All of them had a restlessness in common.
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A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief.
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American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash--all of them--surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered in rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use.
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When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.
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People don't want advice...only corroboration.
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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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You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.
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Trips to fairly unknown regions should be made twice once to make mistakes and once to correct them.
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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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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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Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.
John Steinbeck
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Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man.
John Steinbeck
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When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influences and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.
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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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Show me the man who isn't interested in discussing himself.
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Nobody changes. Nobody gets hurt.
John Steinbeck
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Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of accident or human frailty, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one speech.
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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. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught.
John Steinbeck