Quote

My wants are simple. I have no desire to latch onto a monster symbol of fate and power and prove my manhood in titanic piscine war. But sometimes I do like a couple of cooperative fish of frying size.

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
Simple
Boat
Symbol
Latch
Desire
Rivers
Lakes
Latches
War
Size
Fishing
Titanic
Power
Sea
Onto
Frying
Sometimes
Fate
Monsters
Cooperative
Like
Prove
Symbols
Cooperatives
Couple
Fish
Manhood
Wants
Fishes
Monster

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I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.
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The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.
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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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For it is my opinion that we enclose and celebrate the freaks of our nation and our civilization. Yellowstone National Park is no more representative of America than is Disneyland.
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Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world
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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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I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble.
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Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
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She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do.
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When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.
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Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product I turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. Consequently criticism doesn't mean anything to me. As a disciplinary matter, it is too late.
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A man on a horse is spiritually, as well as physically, bigger then a man on foot.
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Yes, you should talk, he said. Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth.
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Trips to fairly unknown regions should be made twice once to make mistakes and once to correct them.
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The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
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Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head. They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but it’s jus’ in their head.
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A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory
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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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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. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught.
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There is one thing pleasantly unconfusing about medicine. The direction and the end are fixed and the patient never works backward.
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