Quote

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page a day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

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
Writing
Gets
Finish
Going
Lose
Surprised
Always
Loses
Abandon
Idea
Page
Write
Helps
Helping
Track
Ideas
Finished
Ever
Pages

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Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
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Niagara Falls is very nice. I'm very glad I saw it, because from now on if I am asked whether I have seen Niagara Falls I can say yes, and be telling the truth for once.
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You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?
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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.
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So much there is to see, but our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world.
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Three hours of writing require twenty hours of preparation. Luckily I have learned to dream about the work, which saves me some working time.
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A dying organism is often observed to be capable of extraordinary endurance and strength. .. When any living organism is attacked, its whole function seems to aim towards reproduction.
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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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I do want to make it very convincing. And the best way to do that is to put most of it in dialogue.
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There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen.
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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.
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Books are the best friends you can have they inform you, and entertain you, and they don't talk back.
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We know what we got, and we don't care whether you know it or not.
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A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory
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You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.
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In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved.
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Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.
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The last clear definite function of man — muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need — this is man.
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This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.
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