1,374 Quotes by John Steinbeck

The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb.

It was his first experience with this kind of love and it nearly killed him.

I think perhaps I am one of those lucky mortals whose work and whose life are the same thing.

Well, I remember this girl. I am not whole without her. I am not alive without her. When she was with me I was more alive than I have ever been, and not only when she was pleasant either. Even when we were fighting I was whole.

He never forgot anything but he never bothered to arrange his memories. -Hazel, Cannery Row

Only once or twice in her life had she ever understood all of him, but the part of him which she knew, she knew intricately and well. No little appetite or pain, no carelessness or meanness in him escaped her; no thought or dream or longing in him ever reached her. And yet several times in her life she had seen the stars.

Wishing just brought earned disappointment.

Then the sun came up and shook the night chill out of the air the way you'd shake a rug.

For how can one know colour in perpetual green, and what good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?