John Steinbeck
Riches seem to come to the poor in spirit, the poor in interest and joy. To put it straight - the very rich are a poor bunch of bastardsCollection: Joy
What hidden, hoarded longings there are in all of us.Collection: Longing
life passes by in a wink so try to never miss a moment of itCollection: Missing
If you want to keep a friend, never test him.Collection: Want
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness? You only truly, deeply appreciate and are grateful for something when you compare and contrast it to something worse.Collection: Summer
I have wondered why is it that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death that others.Collection: People
There's a capacity for appetite... that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfyCollection: Cake
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.Collection: Feelings
My whole work drive has been aimed at making people understand each other. . .Collection: People
... a man is a very important thing-maybe more important than a star.Collection: Stars
New York is a wonderful city... It is going to be the capital of the world.Collection: New York
Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.Collection: Water
Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world, of all living things.Collection: World
I think today if we forbade our illiterate children to touch the wonderful things of our literature, perhaps they might steal them and find secret joy.Collection: Children
Oh, the strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!Collection: Taste
New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it - once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.Collection: New York
I carry a gun cause a cop is too heavy.Collection: Gun
I have thought that men and women should never come together except in bed. There is the only place where their natural hatred of each other is not so apparent.Collection: Men
No one knows how greatness comes to a man. It may lie in his blackness, sleeping, or it may lance into him like those driven fiery particles from outer space. These things, however, are known about greatness: need gives it life and puts it in action; it never comes without pain; it leaves a man changed, chastened, and exalted at the same time--he can never return to simplicity.Collection: Pain
The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in lots of people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does.Collection: Strong
I guess this is why I hate governments, all governments. It is always the rule, the fine print, carried out by fine-print men. There's nothing to fight, no wall to hammer with frustrated fists.Collection: Wall
She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do.Collection: Brain
Doc still loved true things but he knew that it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.Collection: Mistress
A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.Collection: Nuts
A dog is a bond between strangers.Collection: Dog
...Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.Collection: Book
A man who gets few letters does not open one lightly.Collection: Men
The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.Collection: War
I believe there are techniques of the human mind whereby, in its dark deep, problems are examined, rejected or accepted. Such activities sometimes concern facets a man does not know he has. How often one goes to sleep troubled and full of pain, not knowing what causes the travail, and in the morning a whole new direction and a clearness is there, maybe the results of the black reasoning. And again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and chest are tight and electric with joy, and nothing in the thoughts to justify it or cause it.Collection: Morning
The cars of the migrant people crawled out of the side roads onto the great cross-country highway, and they took the migrant way to the West.... And because they were lonely and perplexed, because they had all come from a place of sadness and worry and defeat, and because they were all going to a mysterious new place, ... a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream.Collection: Country
Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is--and a woman too, I guess.Collection: Men
Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head. They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but it’s jus’ in their head.Collection: Book
Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man.Collection: Men
Some men ease themselves like setting hens into the nest of death.Collection: Men
I think bullfights are for men who aren't very brave and wish they were. If you saw one you'll know what I mean. Remember after all the cape work when the bull tries to kill something that isn't there? Remember how he gets confused and uneasy, sometimes just stands and looks for an answer? Well, then they have to give him a horse or his heart will break. He has to get his horns into something solid or his spirit dies. Well, I'm that horse. And that's the kind of men I get, confused and puzzled. If they can get a horn into me, that's a little triumph.Collection: Horse
Not only do the brave get killed, but the brave have a better chance of it.Collection: Brave
When you're huntin' somepin you're a hunter, an' you're strong. Can't nobody beat a hunter. But when you get hunted - that's different. Somepin happens to you. You ain't strong: maybe you're fierce, but you ain't strong." - MuleyCollection: Strong
Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.Collection: Believe
Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches, nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair.Collection: Games
Show me the man who isn't interested in discussing himself.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Loss
There's nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can't see or hear or touch a man, it's best to let him go.Collection: Men
Men really do need sea-monsters in their personal oceansCollection: Ocean
A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policies and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.Collection: Inspirational
Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three [great teachers] did not tell - they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and very precious.Collection: Beautiful
People need responsibility. They resist assuming it, but they cannot get along without it.Collection: Responsibility
I've always taken my hangovers as consequence, not as a punishment.Collection: Taken
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.Collection: Sound
I guess there are never enough books.Collection: Book