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If you want to destroy a nation, give it too much - make it greedy, miserable and sick.

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
Much
Miserable
Make
Destroy
Sick
Nation
Nations
Simple
Give
Giving
Greedy

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We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.
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People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.
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A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.
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What some people find in religion a writer may find in his craft...a kind of breaking through to glory.
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And you know what it is? San Francisco a golden handcuff with the key thrown away.
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Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
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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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Money is not nice. Money got no friends but more money.
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The great concepts of oneness and of majestic order seem always to be born in the desert.
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for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.
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So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.
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We have to make a mark, even if it's only a scribble.
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I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.
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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.
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Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.
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The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.
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Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I know beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid.
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