Quote

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
Happened
Tyranny
Cannot
Hated
Book
Forgiving
Maim
Kind
Somehow
Sink
People
Sacred
Dictator
Kill
Censorship
Ultimate
Burned
Books
Forgive

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Boileau said that Kings, Gods and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren't very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor.
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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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This you may say of man - when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.
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Must the hunger become anger and the anger fury before anything will be done?
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Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.
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Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God.
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Once I knew the City very well, spent my attic days there, while others were being a lost generation in Paris, I fledged in San Francisco, climbed its hills. slept in its parks, worked on its docks, marched and shouted in its revolts~ It had been to me in the days of my poverty and it did not resent my temporary solvency.
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A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.
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“Do you take pride in your hurt?” Samuel asked. “Does it make you seem large and tragic?” “I don't know.” “Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”
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We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God.
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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.
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The people in flight from the terror behind-strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.
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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.
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Nobody changes. Nobody gets hurt.
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One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter, Beware. You will never get out of this world alive.
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But you can't start over Only a boy can start over You and me Why, we're all that's been
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