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

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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?
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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.
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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)
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Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there.
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Doc tips his hat to dogs as he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him.
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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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Within that frame he went a long way and burned a deep scar.
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But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.
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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.
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... a man is a very important thing-maybe more important than a star.
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All we got is the family unbroke.
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Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.
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Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.
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The words are meaningless except in terms of feeling. Does anyone act as the result of thought or does feeling stimulate action and sometimes thought implement it.
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I think I love you, Cal. -Abra I'm not good. -Cal Because you're not good. -Abra
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If you understand each other you will be kind to each other.
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There are places in this world where fable, myth, preconception, love, longing or prejudice step in and so distort a cool, clear appraisal that a kind of high colored magical confusion takes permanent hold...Surely Texas is such a place.
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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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The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or the breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.
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Must the hunger become anger and the anger fury before anything will be done?
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