John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley Quotes

There is a breed of desert men, not hiding exactly but gone to sanctuary from the sins of confusion.

When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of ever finishing.

The only good writer was a dead writer. Then he couldn't surprise anyone any more, couldn't hurt anyone any more.

And I am sure that, as all pendulums reverse their swing, so eventually will the swollen cities rupture like dehiscent wombs and disperse their children back to the countryside. This prophecy is underwritten by the tendency of the rich to do this already. Where the rich lead, the poor will follow, or try to.

The great concepts of oneness and of majestic order seem always to be born in the desert.

Tom Wolfe was right. You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.

In long-range planning for a trip, I think there is a private conviction that it won't happen.

Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not to much to see but to tell afterward.

A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.

I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.