Quote

I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble.

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
Goes
Carefully
Trouble
Whereas
Fancied
Wonder
Direction
Blunder
Plan
Blissful
Ignorance
Aimed
Plans
Blunders
Along
Route
Pieces
Routes

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When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people.
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I've always tried out my material on my dogs first. Years ago, when my red setter chewed up the manuscript of 'Of Mice and Men,' I said at the time that the dog must have been an excellent literary critic.
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I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now--only that place where the books are kept.
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Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.
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It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing to be loved without satiety.
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There is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little they crash and shatter.
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Many are the stories I have heard about myself. I have mistresses I have never met. When I hear that I am a sodomist and a zoophalist then I shall know that I have reached the high point of fame, but I suppose I can hardly expect such exaltation for many years.
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This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.
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Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man - and the Word is with Men.
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It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.
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But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.
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Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God.
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It occurs to me that just as the Carthaginians hired mercenaries to do their fighting for them, we Americans being in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat.
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..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.
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