Steinbeck, John Quotes

Beans are easy to transport and they don't spoil. A man can well nigh live on them.

Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.

We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say -- and to feel -- Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought.

Henry confused solemnity with sorrow.

My mother was a Theosophist.. my father prayed directly to the god of war.. and I.. am a softshelled Methodist.

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

There used to be a thing or a commodity we put great store by. It was called the People. Find out where the People have gone. I don't mean the square-eyed toothpaste-and-hair-dye people or the new-car-or-bust people, or the success-and-coronary people. Maybe they never existed, but if there ever were the People, that's the commodity the Declaration was talking about, and Mr. Lincoln.

stars swimming in schools through winddriven clouds.

Texas is not a state -- it's a state of mind.

Under the oaks the maidenhair flourished... there were five fingered ferns from East of Eden.