Quote

I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt- and there is the story of mankind.

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
Think
Mankind
Thinking
Small
Rejection
World
Story
Extent
Everyone
Revenge
Comes
Guilt
Felt
Anger
Stories
Large
Kind
Crime

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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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I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody.
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Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.
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Boileau said that Kings, Gods and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren't very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor.
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Let's say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out of the box, the way a baby chick escapes an egg, is it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped?
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When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.
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People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.
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It's almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.
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In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved.
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Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.
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There's a capacity for appetite... that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfy
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A question is a trap and an answer is your foot in it.
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... every little boy thinks he invented sin.
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And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.
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A funeral isn't for the dead. You'll simply be a stage set for a kind of festival maybe. And besides, you won't even be there.
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How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.
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There's something desirable about anything you're used to as opposed to something you're not.
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I've lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.
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