John Steinbeck
You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.Collection: Memories
This I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.Collection: Freedom
A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.Collection: Beautiful
Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.Collection: Morning
That man who is more then his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis.Collection: Men
No single organism could be understood without observing and comprehending the entire colony.Collection: Colony
There is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp.Collection: Nature
He was born in fury and he lived in lightning. Tom came headlong into life. He was a giant in joy and enthusiasms. He didn't discover the world and its people, he created them. When he read his father's books, he was the first. He lived in a world shining and fresh and as uninspected as Eden on the sixth day. His mind plunged like a colt in a happy pasture, and when later the world put up fences, he plunged against the wire, and when the final stockade surrounded him, he plunged right through it and out. And as he was capable of giant joy, so did he harbor huge sorrow.Collection: Father
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.Collection: Hate
There are places in this world where fable, myth, preconception, love, longing or prejudice step in and so distort a cool, clear appraisal that a kind of high colored magical confusion takes permanent hold...Surely Texas is such a place.Collection: Texas
Trips to fairly unknown regions should be made twice; once to make mistakes and once to correct them.Collection: Mistake
Father and son are natural enemies and each is happier and more secure in keeping it that way.Collection: Father
Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong. But this culture is fences, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back. Might it not be that in the dark pools of some men the evil grows strong enough to wriggle over the fence and swim free? Would not such a man be our monster, and are we not related to him in our own hidden water? It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.Collection: Strong
It is the hour of pearl—the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.Collection: Night
..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.Collection: Mean
If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.Collection: Interesting
Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts.Collection: Mean
Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.Collection: Writing
Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.Collection: Sweet
Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.Collection: Girl
I nearly always write — just as I nearly always breathe.Collection: Writing
I dislike helplessness in other people and in myself, and this is by far my greatest fear of illness.Collection: Greatest Fear
The clouds appeared and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore.Collection: Clouds
But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.Collection: Cat
I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a satisfaction like that which follows good and shared love.Collection: Writing
A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive.Collection: Book
Best thing is to get the words down every day. And it is time to start now.Collection: Best Things
A study of animal communities has this advantage: they are merely what they are, for anyone to see who will and can look clearly; they cannot complicate the picture by worded idealisms, by saying one thing and being another; here the struggle is unmasked and the beauty is unmasked.Collection: Struggle
I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen. It's scary to think about. Point of reference again. When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people.Collection: Thinking
I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.Collection: Prayer
An ocean without unnamed monsters would be like sleep without dreams.Collection: Dream
It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.Collection: Angel
Intention, good or bad, is not enough.Collection: Enough
The last clear definite function of men—muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need—this is man.Collection: Men
You can't slice up morals.Collection: Moral
It don't cost money to ask.Collection: Cost
Luck, you see, brings bitter friends.Collection: Luck
It requires self-esteem to receive-not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.Collection: Self Esteem
The basic rule [of writing] 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.Collection: Writing
They must be real people. And this means that every word in every line of speech must be accurate and full of some kind of meaning which stretches not only forward in the book but stems from before in the book.Collection: Real
Well, I git enough sorrow. I like to git away from it.Collection: Movie
Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' I thought an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.Collection: Jesus
The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.Collection: Strong
You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.Collection: Monsters
A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.Collection: Stars
There is comfort in routine.Collection: Comfort
Saints can spring from any soil.Collection: Spring
I guess I'm trying to say, Grab anything that goes by. It may not come around again.Collection: Trying
...no gift will ever buy back a man's love when you have removed his self-love.Collection: Men