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One can't be happy as I have been for very long. There's a law against it. I have worked hard and enjoyed my work and it is the punishment of man to hate his work. Sooner or later I will have work that I hate.

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
Hard
Sooner
Work
Punishment
Long
Enjoyed
Men
Worked
Later
Law
Happy
Hate

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I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.... The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?
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A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.
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They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)
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Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.
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We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip a trip takes us.
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If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.
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And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.
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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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This was an evil beyond thinking. The killing of a man was not so evil as the killing of a boat. For a boat does not have sons, and a boat cannot protect itself, and a wounded boat does not heal.
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We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.
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A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?
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If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.
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The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side.
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A dog is a bond between strangers.
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You're buying years of work, toil in the sun you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.
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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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And their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels.
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American married life is the doormat to the whorehouse.
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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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