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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
Fear
Terror
Firsts
Putting
First
Amazing
Assails
Always
Line
Straightening
Magic
Terrors
Lines
Shyness
Prayer
Prayers
Suffering
Suffer
More quotes by John Steinbeck
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.
John Steinbeck
The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California.
John Steinbeck
I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
John Steinbeck
The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.
John Steinbeck
Only mediocrity escapes criticism.
John Steinbeck
Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world.
John Steinbeck
That man who is more then his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis.
John Steinbeck
No one knows my ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time.
John Steinbeck
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
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
There's a capacity for appetite... that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfy
John Steinbeck
In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms
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With all our horrors and faults, somewhere in us there is a shining.
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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.
John Steinbeck
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.
John Steinbeck
The power of an attitude is amazing
John Steinbeck
It isn't like the rest of the country - it is like a nation itself - more tolerant than the rest in a curious way. Littleness gets swallowed up here. All the viciousness that makes other cities vicious is sucked up and absorbed in New York.
John Steinbeck
Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.
John Steinbeck
We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.
John Steinbeck
If you understand each other you will be kind to each other.
John Steinbeck
