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

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A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.
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Maybe-- maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure-- never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself?
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My wants are simple. I have no desire to latch onto a monster symbol of fate and power and prove my manhood in titanic piscine war. But sometimes I do like a couple of cooperative fish of frying size.
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The dairy man had a Ph.D. in mathematics, and he must have had some training in philosophy. He liked what he was doing and he didn't want to be somewhere else - one of the few contented people I met in my whole journey.
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I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.
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I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.
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You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.
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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. Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.
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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 comfort in routine.
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Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.
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Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
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Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all else, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.
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And Tom brought him chicken soup until he wanted to kill him. The lore has not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either.
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In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
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To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.
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Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there.
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Give me a used Bible and I will, I think, be able to tell you about a man by the places that are edged with the dirt of seeking fingers.
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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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Pictures... are also opinions... [they] set down what the camera operator sees and he sees what he wants to see and what he loves and hates and pities and is proud of.
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