"People don't want advice...only corroboration."
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Quote collection
John Steinbeck quotes (page 22 of 35)
697 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"When you know a friend is there you do not go to see him. Then he's gone and you blast your conscience to shreds that you did not see him."
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"We think of strangers as stronger and better than we are."
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"With a few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration."
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"I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background."
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"I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble."
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"We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God."
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"George's voice became deeper. He repeated his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before. 'Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch. They ain't got nothing to look ahead to."
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"Kino heard the little splash of morning waves on the beach. It was very good -- Kino closed his eyes again to listen to his music."
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"With knowledge there is no hope,... without hope I would sit motionless, rusting like unused armor."
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"'I know,' said Winter, 'but they don't know.' And he went on with a thought he had been having. 'A time-minded people,' he said, 'and the time is nearly up. They think that just because they have only one leader and one head, we are all like that. They know that ten heads lopped off will destroy them, but we are a free people; we have as many heads as we have people, and in a time of need leaders pop up among us like mushrooms.'"
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"A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed. Remember this thing. I have known boys forty years old because there was no need for a man."
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"Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all."
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"...to find where you are going, you must know where you are."
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"At one point, as Samuel urges Adam to raise his boys well regardless of the blood that might be in them, Adam tells him, "You can't make a race horse of a pig." Samuel replies, "No, but you can make a very fast pig."
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"To the heavens on the wings of a pig."
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"American married life is the doormat to the whorehouse."
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"I start out to write five days a week, and then it runs to six days and finally seven. Then, eventually, that wave of weariness overwhelms me and I don't know what's the matter. That is, I know but I won't admit it. I'm just tired from writing. As you get older, writing becomes harder. By that I mean you see so many more potentialities. Things like transition used to trouble me. But not any more. When I say it's harder, I'm not talking about facility. You learn all the so-called tricks, but then you don't want to use them."
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"The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line."
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"Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts."
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