Quote

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.

John Steinbeck

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Men
Dog
Mice
Time
Tried
Critic
Materials
Literary
Firsts
Dogs
First
Excellent
Setter
Must
Red
Chewed
Years
Critics
Manuscript
Always
Material
Manuscripts

More quotes by John Steinbeck

Image
Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of accident or human frailty, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one speech.
John Steinbeck
Image
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.
John Steinbeck
Image
Men really need sea-monsters in their personal oceans. An ocean without its unnamed monsters would be like a completely dreamless sleep.
John Steinbeck
Image
Don't make everyone know about your sadness.
John Steinbeck
Image
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.
John Steinbeck
Image
For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.
John Steinbeck
Image
To be alive at all is to have scars.
John Steinbeck
Image
In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms
John Steinbeck
Image
This is beyond understanding. said the king. You are the wisest man alive. You know what is preparing. Why do you not make a plan to save yourself? And Merlin said quietly, Because I am wise. In the combat between wisdom and feeling, wisdom never wins.
John Steinbeck
Image
You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.
John Steinbeck
Image
There's nothing in the world like that first taste of beer.
John Steinbeck
Image
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’.
John Steinbeck
Image
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.
John Steinbeck
Image
Best thing is to get the words down every day. And it is time to start now.
John Steinbeck
Image
And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, Use it well, use it wisely.
John Steinbeck
Image
I have no interest in the printed word. I would continue to write if there were no writing and no print. I put my words down for a matter of memory. They are more made to be spoken than to be read.
John Steinbeck
Image
Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' I thought an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.
John Steinbeck
Image
We have to make a mark, even if it's only a scribble.
John Steinbeck
Image
I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.
John Steinbeck
Image
I have taken as much as six years to prepare a book for writing. There is such a delirium of effort in the production of a book it's like childbirth. And, like childbirth, one forgets the pains immediately so that when you come to write another one you dare to take it up again. Some precious anesthesia sees you through.
John Steinbeck