Quote

I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one.

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
Always
Line
Straightening
Magic
Terrors
Lines
Shyness
Prayer
Prayers
Suffering
Suffer
Fear
Terror
Firsts
Putting
First
Amazing
Assails

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Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world.
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He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.
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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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The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
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Critics are the eunuchs of literature. They stand by in envious awe while the whole man and his partner demonstrate the art of living.
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You got a God. Don't make no difference if you don' know what he looks like.
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When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.
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It is strange how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place. Everyone must have one, although I never heard a man tell of it.
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We know what we got, and we don't care whether you know it or not.
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