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Failure is a state of mind. It's like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.
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
Hell
Sliding
Takes
Ants
State
Lion
Keep
Traps
States
Lions
Back
Jump
Mind
Sand
Like
Failure
Digs
More quotes by John Steinbeck
Maybe-- maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure-- never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself?
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Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.
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And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.
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So much there is to see, but our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world.
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Three hours of writing require twenty hours of preparation. Luckily I have learned to dream about the work, which saves me some working time.
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I can still tend the rabbits, George? I didn't mean no harm, George.
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All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.
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An answer is invariably the parent of a whole family of new questions.
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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. Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.
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There is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little they crash and shatter.
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Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts.
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And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, Use it well, use it wisely.
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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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Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.
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Fella in business got to lie an' cheat, but he calls it somepin else. That's what's important. You go steal that tire an' you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business.
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You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?
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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.
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Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.
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It seems to me Montana is a great splash of grandeur. The scale is huge but not overpowering. The land is rich with grass and color, and the mountains are the kind I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda.
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Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
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