1,374 Quotes by John Steinbeck

Let's say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out of the box, the way a baby chick escapes an egg, is it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped?

No,” said George. “No, Lennie. I ain’t mad. I never been mad, an’ I ain’t now. That’s a thing I want ya to know.

Goddam it, whenever a person wants reassurance he tells a friend to think what he wants to be true. It's like asking a waiter what's good tonight.

She used religion as a therapy for the ills of the world and herself, and she changed the religion to fit the ill. When she found that the theosophy she had developed for communication with a dead husband was not necessary, she cast about for some new unhappiness.

Don't you dare take the lazy way. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't let me catch you doing it! Now -- look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do.

A kind of light spread out from her.And everything changed color.And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to.And there was no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid anymore.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

The wedding was in Monterey, a sombre boding ceremony in a little Protestant chapel. The church had so often seen two ripe bodies die by the process of marriage that it seemed to celebrate a mystic double death with its ritual.

It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary