Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Back
Jump
Mind
Sand
Like
Failure
Digs
Hell
Sliding
Takes
Ants
State
Lion
Keep
Traps
States
Lions

More quotes by John Steinbeck

Image
American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash--all of them--surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered in rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use.
John Steinbeck
Image
Socialism is just another form of religion, and thus delusional.
John Steinbeck
Image
A stilted heron labored up into the air and pounded down the river.
John Steinbeck
Image
I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton woool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it's such a sweet trap.
John Steinbeck
Image
A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive.
John Steinbeck
Image
There's an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort.
John Steinbeck
Image
Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there.
John Steinbeck
Image
To the heavens on the wings of a pig.
John Steinbeck
Image
Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.
John Steinbeck
Image
To finish is sadness to a writer — a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.
John Steinbeck
Image
All great and precious things are lonely.
John Steinbeck
Image
Money is not nice. Money got no friends but more money.
John Steinbeck
Image
I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair.
John Steinbeck
Image
And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.
John Steinbeck
Image
The difficulty of course is that I like women. It is only wives I am in trouble with.
John Steinbeck
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Only through immitation do we develop toward originality.
John Steinbeck
Image
If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.
John Steinbeck
Image
Such is the prestige of the Nobel Award and of this place where I stand that I am impelled, not to speak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession and in the great and good men who have practised it through the ages.
John Steinbeck