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A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive.
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
Kind
Somehow
Sink
People
Sacred
Dictator
Kill
Censorship
Ultimate
Burned
Books
Forgive
Happened
Tyranny
Cannot
Hated
Book
Forgiving
Maim
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A stilted heron labored up into the air and pounded down the river.
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To be alive at all is to have scars.
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I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments
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I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere.
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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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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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A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief.
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In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms
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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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As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.
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American married life is the doormat to the whorehouse.
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An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.
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With a few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.
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It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.
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There is comfort in routine.
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It is a nice thing to be working and believing in my work again. I hope I can keep the drive. I only feel whole and well when it is this way.
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Intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over.
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He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?
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Strength and success they are above morality, above criticism. It seems then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call 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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