1,374 Quotes by John Steinbeck

It is good to know what you are doing. The man with his pickled fish has set down one truth and has recorded in his experience many lies. The fish is not that color, that texture, that dead, nor does he smell that way.

In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. KNOWING A MAN WELL NEVER LEADS TO HATE and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. TRY TO UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER!

In a world that was not easy for Alice to bear or understand, flies were the final and malicious burden laid upon her.

George uzdahnu. - Milija je meni obična javna kuća - reče. - Tamo čovjek može ući i napiti se i istjerati sve iz sebe odjednom, a bez neprilika. I zna koliko će ga stajati. A ovo ti je meka za zatvor, to ti je klopka za buturnicu.

I always found in myself a dread of the west and a love of the east.

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.

There was a huge moon over the western mountains, and it made the city seem even more mysterious and old, and the great black castle on the ridge stood out in front of the moon. And if there are ghosts anyplace in the world, they must be here, and if there is a ghost of Queen Tamara, she must have been walking the ridge in the moonlight that night.

Ideas are not dangerous unless they find seeding place in some earth more profound than the mind.

First the strangers came with argument and authority and gunpowder to back up both. And in the four hundred years Kino's people had learned only one defense - a slight slitting of the eyes and a slight tightening of the lips and a retirement. Nothing could break down this wall, and they could remain whole within the wall.