1,374 Quotes by John Steinbeck

How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)

The names of places carry a charge of the people who named them.

The last clear definite function of men—muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need—this is man.

It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.

Why do men like me want sons?" he wondered. "It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance at life; like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone.

The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size.

And her eyes were on the highway, where life whizzed by.

That's what makes it ours-being born on it, working on it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.

I ain't sleepin'. I got too much to puzzle with.