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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Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product I turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. Consequently criticism doesn't mean anything to me. As a disciplinary matter, it is too late.
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...Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.
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A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.
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A fallow field is a sin.
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Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man.
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Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.
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Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.
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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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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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she knew she could help him best by being silent and by being near
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To the heavens on the wings of a pig.
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If you are in love-that's a good thing-that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone.
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The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.
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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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One can't be happy as I have been for very long. There's a law against it. I have worked hard and enjoyed my work and it is the punishment of man to hate his work. Sooner or later I will have work that I hate.
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Kino heard the little splash of morning waves on the beach. It was very good -- Kino closed his eyes again to listen to his music.
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