Quotes by John Steinbeck

About John Steinbeck:

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Red Pony (1937). The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939), widely attributed to be part of the American literary canon, is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece. In the first 75 years since it was published, it sold 14 million copies.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

That's why I'm talking to you. You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.

John Steinbeck

The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts will do the same thing in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in a path or a breath caught at the sight of a pretty girl or a finger nail nicked in the garden soil.

John Steinbeck

Will liked to live so that no one could find fault with him, and to do that he had to live as nearly like other people as possible.

John Steinbeck

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.

John Steinbeck

Sexuality with all its attendant yearnings and pains, jealousies and taboos, is the most disturbing impulse humans have.

John Steinbeck

My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.

John Steinbeck

Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.

John Steinbeck

He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.

John Steinbeck

I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or es...

John Steinbeck

Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also––either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth...

John Steinbeck

Cathy's lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or responsibility, and they were used for profit. Most liars are tripped up either because they forget what they have told or because the lie is suddenly faced with an...

John Steinbeck

All great and precious things are lonely.

John Steinbeck

And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing - maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and...

John Steinbeck

Oh, I guess I'm physically able to father a child. That's not what I'm thinking. I'm too closely married to a quiet reading lamp".

John Steinbeck

I am sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It's small mining-- small mining. You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself som...

John Steinbeck

Tom felt his darkness. His father was beautiful and clever, his mother was short and mathematically sure. Each of his brothers and sisters had looks or gifts or fortune. Tom loved all of them passionately, but he felt heavy and earth-bound. He climbe...

John Steinbeck

Sometimes in the summer evenings they walked up the hill to watch the afterglow clinging to the tops of the western mountains and to feel the breeze drawn into the valley by the rising day-heated air. Usually they stood silently for a while and breat...

John Steinbeck

The house was clean, scrubbed and immaculate, curtains washed, windows polished, but all as a man does it - the ironed curtains did not hang quite straight and there were streaks on the windows and a square showed on the table when a book was moved.

John Steinbeck

During the years he was never sick, except of course for the chronic indigestion which was universal, and still is, with men who live alone, cook for themselves, and eat in solitude.

John Steinbeck

Money's easy to make if it's money you want. But with few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.

John Steinbeck

Old Sam Hamilton saw this coming. He said there couldn’t be any more universal philosophers. The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb. He saw a time when one man would know only one little fragment, but he would know it well.” ...

John Steinbeck

Author Bio

  • NameJohn Steinbeck
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • AliasesJohn Ernst Steinbeck, Jr.
  • BornFebruary 27, 1902
  • DiedDecember 20, 1968
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Screenwriter; Journalist; Novelist
  • WorksOf Mice And Men; The Grapes Of Wrath; East Of Eden
  • AwardsNobel Prize In Literature; Presidential Medal Of Freedom; National Book Award