John Steinbeck

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.
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Life passes by in a wink so try to never miss a moment of it.
-John Steinbeck

Time is the only critic without ambition.
-John Steinbeck

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 almost always leads to love.
-John Steinbeck

All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.
-John Steinbeck

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
-John Steinbeck

But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not."
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden

When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people.
-John Steinbeck

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
-John Steinbeck

The basic rule given us was simple and heartbreaking. A story to be effective had to convey something from the writer to the reader, and the power of its offering was the measure of its excellence. Outside of that, there were no rules.
-John Steinbeck

It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.
-John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

All great and precious things are lonely.
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Anything that just costs money is cheap.
-John Steinbeck

I guess there are never enough books.
-John Steinbeck

And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.
-John Steinbeck

You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.
-John Steinbeck

Don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens - The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.
-John Steinbeck

A man without words is a man without thought.
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden

It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
-John Steinbeck

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
-John Steinbeck

My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden

A book is like a man — clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.
-John Steinbeck

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
-John Steinbeck

I've lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.
-John Steinbeck

I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
-John Steinbeck

If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.
-John Steinbeck

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
-John Steinbeck

It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
-John Steinbeck

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
-John Steinbeck

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
-John Steinbeck

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
-John Steinbeck

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.
-John Steinbeck

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
-John Steinbeck

We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.
-John Steinbeck

No one who is young is ever going to be old.
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden