John Steinbeck Quotes

If we could learn to like ourselves, even a little, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.

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.

We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — ”Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.”

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

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.

It is a nice thing to be working and believing in my work again. I hope I can keep the drive. I only feel whole and well when it is this way.

For the first time I am working on a book that is not limited and that will take every bit of experience and thought and feeling that I have.

Boileau said that Kings, Gods and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren't very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor … And since our race admires gallantry, the writer will deal with it where he finds it. He finds it in the struggling poor now.

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