1,374 Quotes by John Steinbeck

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.

I’m learnin’ one thing good,” she said. “Learnin’ it all a time, ever’ day. If you’re in trouble or hurt or need – go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

You stay out here a little while, an’ if you smell any roses, you come let me smell, too.

It is advisable to look from the tide pools to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.

Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer little deaths within life, but simple losses of money. And all their love was thinned with money, and all their fierceness dribbled away in interest until they were no longer farmers at all, but little shopkeepers of crops, little manufacturers who must sell before they can make.

A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody.

From start to finish I found no strangers. If I had, I might be able to report them more objectively. But these are my people and this my country. If I found matters to criticize and to deplore, they were tendencies equally present in myself.

Men really do need sea-monsters in their personal oceans.

These too are of a burning color – not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were liquid and could raise a cream, that golden cream might be like the color of the poppies.