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

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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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I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments
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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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A little hope, even hopeless hope, never hurt anybody.
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A man on a horse is spiritually, as well as physically, bigger then a man on foot.
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You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.
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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.
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You can boast about anything if it's all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.
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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.
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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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One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.
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It's almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.
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A strange species we are, We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick. --John Steinbeck to Adlai Stevenson
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A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.
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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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The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you.
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It is strange how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place. Everyone must have one, although I never heard a man tell of it.
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A good writer always works at the impossible.There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights.
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Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels. They gathered mountains and valleys, rivers and whole horizons, the way a man might now gain tittle to building lots.
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The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.
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