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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.
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
Uncertainty
Loved
Certain
Good
Men
Topmost
Frailty
Underneath
Layers
More quotes by John Steinbeck
You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.
John Steinbeck
Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.
John Steinbeck
A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.
John Steinbeck
A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?
John Steinbeck
I am sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It's small mining-- small mining. You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.
John Steinbeck
“Do you take pride in your hurt?” Samuel asked. “Does it make you seem large and tragic?” “I don't know.” “Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”
John Steinbeck
There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.
John Steinbeck
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.
John Steinbeck
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
And their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels.
John Steinbeck
Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
John Steinbeck
What some people find in religion a writer may find in his craft...a kind of breaking through to glory.
John Steinbeck
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.
John Steinbeck
It don't cost money to ask.
John Steinbeck
Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.
John Steinbeck
If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.
John Steinbeck
Don't make everyone know about your sadness.
John Steinbeck
Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it.
John Steinbeck
An answer is invariably the parent of a whole family of new questions.
John Steinbeck
And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.
John Steinbeck
