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When you know a friend is there you do not go to see him. Then he's gone and you blast your conscience to shreds that you did not see him.
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
Blast
Conscience
Friend
Gone
Shreds
More quotes by John Steinbeck
The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels.
John Steinbeck
I can still tend the rabbits, George? I didn't mean no harm, George.
John Steinbeck
The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
John Steinbeck
When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influences and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.
John Steinbeck
Humanity has been passing through a gray and desolate time of confusion.
John Steinbeck
Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners ... California Chinese, Boston Irish, Wisconsin German, yes, Alabama Negroes, have more in common than they have apart ... The American identity is an exact and provable thing.
John Steinbeck
I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background.
John Steinbeck
Men really need sea-monsters in their personal oceans. An ocean without its unnamed monsters would be like a completely dreamless sleep.
John Steinbeck
In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved.
John Steinbeck
The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage.
John Steinbeck
Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.
John Steinbeck
...no gift will ever buy back a man's love when you have removed his self-love.
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
Nobody changes. Nobody gets hurt.
John Steinbeck
Only through immitation do we develop toward originality.
John Steinbeck
It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary
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
How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)
John Steinbeck
Men all do about the same thing when they wake up.
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
