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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.
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
Poetry
Novel
Story
Evil
Contest
Stories
Contests
Good
Ending
Never
Novels
Built
More quotes by John Steinbeck
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.
John Steinbeck
I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn't ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.
John Steinbeck
How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise - the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream - be set down alive?
John Steinbeck
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.
John Steinbeck
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?
John Steinbeck
A funeral isn't for the dead. You'll simply be a stage set for a kind of festival maybe. And besides, you won't even be there.
John Steinbeck
When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.
John Steinbeck
We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.
John Steinbeck
If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.
John Steinbeck
This was an evil beyond thinking. The killing of a man was not so evil as the killing of a boat. For a boat does not have sons, and a boat cannot protect itself, and a wounded boat does not heal.
John Steinbeck
Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.
John Steinbeck
..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.
John Steinbeck
Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life - so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we do.
John Steinbeck
But you can't start. Only a baby can start. You and me - why, we're all that's been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that's us. This land, this red land, is us and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can't start again.
John Steinbeck
He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.
John Steinbeck
Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.
John Steinbeck
They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)
John Steinbeck
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
A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.
John Steinbeck
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.
John Steinbeck
