John Steinbeck

United States
27 Feb 1902 // 20 Dec 1968
Writer

Quotes

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What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.
Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.
You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.
He learned that when people are very poor they still have something to give and the impulse to give it.
Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.
When you're a child you're the center of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They're only ghosts furnished for you to talk to.
The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.
No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.
Of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.
Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays