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

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And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man.
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I've always tried out my material on my dogs first. Years ago, when my red setter chewed up the manuscript of 'Of Mice and Men,' I said at the time that the dog must have been an excellent literary critic.
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A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
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Courage and fear were one thing too.
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The lies we tell about our duty and our purposes, the meaningless words of science and philosophy, are walls that topple before a bewildered little ‘why’.
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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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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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No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.
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Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.
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A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief.
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It is the nature of a person as he/she grows older to protest against change, particularly changes for the better.
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There's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.
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We have to make a mark, even if it's only a scribble.
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Prayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork.
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I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton woool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it's such a sweet trap.
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The words are meaningless except in terms of feeling. Does anyone act as the result of thought or does feeling stimulate action and sometimes thought implement it.
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If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.
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Don't you dare take the lazy way. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't let me catch you doing it! Now -- look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do.
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I’m in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love. And it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it.
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There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.
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