"I nearly always write — just as I nearly always breathe."
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Quote collection
John Steinbeck quotes (page 25 of 35)
697 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"An ocean without unnamed monsters would be like sleep without dreams."
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"Intention, good or bad, is not enough."
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"I'll want to hear,' Samuel said. 'I eat stories like grapes."
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"Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself."
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"My whole work drive has been aimed at making people understand each other. . ."
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"It is astounding to find that the belly of every black and evil thing is as white as snow. And it is saddening to discover how the concealed parts of angels are leporous."
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"A study of animal communities has this advantage: they are merely what they are, for anyone to see who will and can look clearly; they cannot complicate the picture by worded idealisms, by saying one thing and being another; here the struggle is unmasked and the beauty is unmasked."
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"I am writing this from what we Americans call Yurrp. In Yurrp writers are taken as seriously as Lana Turner's legs are in America - a ridiculous situation."
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"You're buying years of work, toil in the sun; you're buying a sorrow that can't talk."
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"There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen."
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"I think there must have been some other girl printed somewhere in his heart, for he was a man of love and his wife was not a woman to show her feelings."
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"Thou mayest rule over sin,' Lee. That's it. I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name you a dozen who were not, and they are the ones the world lives by. It is true of the spirit as it is true of battles — only the winners are remembered."
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"Give me a used Bible and I will, I think, be able to tell you about a man by the places that are edged with the dirt of seeking fingers."
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"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."
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"I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a satisfaction like that which follows good and shared love."
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"I do want to make it very convincing. And the best way to do that is to put most of it in dialogue."
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"I dislike helplessness in other people and in myself, and this is by far my greatest fear of illness."
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"In business and in politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind-but he must get there first."
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"It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be loved without satiety."
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