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In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration.

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
Willpower
Stronger
Habit
Inspiration
Either
Force
Seems
Writing

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Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.
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The American girl makes a servant of her husband and then finds him contemptible for being a servant
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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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Why do men like me want sons? he wondered. It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance at life like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone.
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Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is--and a woman too, I guess.
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I should have known I am the rain. I am the land and I am the rain. The grass will grow out of me in a little while.
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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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Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life - so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we do.
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We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.
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I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.
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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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When Kino had finished, Juana came back to the fire and ate her breakfast. They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway. Kino sighed with satisfaction - and that was conversation.
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The Mexican War was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murders settled on us, the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible.
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There are some times...when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow.
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Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world
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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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You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.
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..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.
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