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

This is just a nigger talkin', an' a busted-back nigger. So it don't mean nothing, see? You couldn't remember it anyways. I seen it over an' over-a guy talkin' to another guy and it don't make no difference if he don't hear or understand. The thing i...

John Steinbeck

A water snake glided smoothly up the pool, twisting its periscope head from side to side; and it swam the length of the pool and came to the legs of a motionless heron that stood in the shadows. A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out b...

John Steinbeck

As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.

John Steinbeck

Consider the blundering anarchic system of the United States the stupidity of some of its lawmakers, the violent reaction, the slowness of its ability to change. Twenty-five key men destroyed could make the Soviet Union stagger, but we could lose our...

John Steinbeck

There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox. We have definitions of good qualities and of bad; not changing things, but generally considered good and bad throughout the ages and throughout the species. Of the good, we t...

John Steinbeck

It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well co...

John Steinbeck

The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.

John Steinbeck

You fellas don' know what you're doin. You're helpin to starve kids...You don' know what you're a' doin'.

John Steinbeck

It was not a safe thing to lead Joe into temptation; he had no resistance to it at all.

John Steinbeck

You keep out of my bed,” said Danny, for he knew that Joe Portagee had come to stay. The way he sat in a chair and crossed his knees had an appearance of permanence.

John Steinbeck

What branch do you want to go in?” “I don’ give a god-damn,” said Pilon jauntily. “I guess we need men like you in the infantry.” And Pilon was written so. He turned then to Big Joe, and the Portagee was getting sober. “Where do you wan...

John Steinbeck

As the wine went down in the bottles, patriotism arose in the three men. And when the wine was gone they went down the hill arm in arm for comradeship and safety, and they walked into Monterey. In front of an enlistment station they cheered loudly fo...

John Steinbeck

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the bastard Time.

John Steinbeck

I live alone," he said simply. "I live in the open. I hear the waves at night and see the black patterns of the pine boughs against the sky. With sound and silence and color and solitude, of course I see visions. Anyone would." "But you don't believe...

John Steinbeck

This is the greatest mystery of the human mind--the inductive leap. Everything falls into place, irrelevancies relate, dissonance becomes harmony, and nonsense wears a crown of meaning. But the clarifying leap springs from the rich soil of confusion,...

John Steinbeck

Doc turned in the seat and looked back. The disappearing sun shone on his laughing face, his gay and eager face. With his left hand he held the bucking steering wheel. Cannery Row looked after the ancient car. It made the first turn and was gone from...

John Steinbeck

There are times that one treasures for all one's life, and such times are burned clearly and sharply on the material of total recall. I felt very fortunate that morning.

John Steinbeck

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

John Steinbeck

A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of h...

John Steinbeck

American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash -- all of them -- surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered with rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so ...

John Steinbeck

But it isn't hunger that drives millions of armed American Males to forests and hills every autumn, as the high incidence of heart failure among the hunters will prove. Somehow the hunting process has to do with masculinity, but I don't quite know ho...

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