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

More quotes by John Steinbeck

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No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.
John Steinbeck
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Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.
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She wasn't happy, but then she wasn't unhappy. She wasn't anything. But I don't believe anyone is a nothing. There has to be something inside, if only to keep the skin from collapsing. This vacant eye, listless hand, this damask cheek dusted like a doughnut with plastic powder, had to have a memory or a dream.
John Steinbeck
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It's almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.
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I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody.
John Steinbeck
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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.
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Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world.
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A fallow field is a sin.
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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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Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world, of all living things.
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Once I knew the City very well, spent my attic days there, while others were being a lost generation in Paris, I fledged in San Francisco, climbed its hills. slept in its parks, worked on its docks, marched and shouted in its revolts~ It had been to me in the days of my poverty and it did not resent my temporary solvency.
John Steinbeck
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Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.
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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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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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I'm back with my own kind of people here now, the bums and drinkers and no goods and it is a fine thing.
John Steinbeck
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It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary
John Steinbeck
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But a man needs company.
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All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.
John Steinbeck
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We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip a trip takes us.
John Steinbeck
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Thou mayest rule over sin.
John Steinbeck