Quote

Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product I turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. Consequently criticism doesn't mean anything to me. As a disciplinary matter, it is too late.

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
Anything
Function
Consequently
Matter
Products
Loose
Mean
Cutting
Product
Writing
Late
Deeply
Even
Personal
Criticism
Secret
Turned
Sense
Mines
Doesn
Mine
Disciplinary

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We have to make a mark, even if it's only a scribble.
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He drank too much when he could get it, ate too much when it was there, talked too much all the time.
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... a man is a very important thing-maybe more important than a star.
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The Mexican War was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murders settled on us, the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible.
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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.
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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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I had been practicing for the Depression a long time. I wasn't involved with loss. I didn't have money to lose, but in common with millions I did dislike hunger and cold.
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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.
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Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there.
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The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you.
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A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.
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When you're huntin' somepin you're a hunter, an' you're strong. Can't nobody beat a hunter. But when you get hunted - that's different. Somepin happens to you. You ain't strong: maybe you're fierce, but you ain't strong. - Muley
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If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.
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I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble.
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There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen.
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We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God.
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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.
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I guess I'm trying to say, Grab anything that goes by. It may not come around again.
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Many are the stories I have heard about myself. I have mistresses I have never met. When I hear that I am a sodomist and a zoophalist then I shall know that I have reached the high point of fame, but I suppose I can hardly expect such exaltation for many years.
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I don’t mind getting smacked on the chin. I just don’t want to get nibbled to death. There’s a difference.
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