Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.
John Steinbeck
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Going
Finish
Abandon
Idea
Ideas
Ever
Writing
More quotes by John Steinbeck
In Spanish there is a word for which I can't find a counterword in English. It is the verb VACILAR... It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere, but does not greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction.
John Steinbeck
A good writer always works at the impossible.There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights.
John Steinbeck
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
I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.
John Steinbeck
For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost- good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word.
John Steinbeck
We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.
John Steinbeck
Don't you dare take the lazy way. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't let me catch you doing it! Now -- look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do.
John Steinbeck
In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.
John Steinbeck
I see too many men delay their exits with a sickly, slow reluctance to leave the stage. It's bad theater as well as bad living.
John Steinbeck
All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight.
John Steinbeck
And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.
John Steinbeck
They successfully combined piracy and puritanism, which aren't so unlike when you come right down to it. Both had a strong dislike for opposition and both had a roving eye for other people's property.
John Steinbeck
Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there.
John Steinbeck
I have wondered why is it that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death that others.
John Steinbeck
I think I love you, Cal. -Abra I'm not good. -Cal Because you're not good. -Abra
John Steinbeck
Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.
John Steinbeck
The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or the breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.
John Steinbeck
Trips to fairly unknown regions should be made twice once to make mistakes and once to correct them.
John Steinbeck
The difficulty of course is that I like women. It is only wives I am in trouble with.
John Steinbeck
I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer -- and what trees and seasons smelled like -- how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.
John Steinbeck
