John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr.was an American author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flatand Cannery Row, the multi-generation epic East of Eden, and the novellas Of Mice and Menand The Red Pony. The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth27 February 1902
CountryUnited States of America
I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair.
The camera is one of the most frightening of modern weapons, particularly to people who have been in warfare, who have been bombed and shelled for at the back of a bombing run is invariably a photograph. In the back of ruined towns, and cities, and factories, there is aerial mapping, or spy mapping, usually with a camera. Therefore the camera is a feared instrument, and a man with a camera is suspected and watched wherever he goes... In the minds of most people today the camera is the forerunner of destruction, and it is suspected, and rightly so.
Pictures... are also opinions... [they] set down what the camera operator sees and he sees what he wants to see and what he loves and hates and pities and is proud of.
It requires self-esteem to receive-not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.
No one knows my ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time.
Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product I turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. Consequently criticism doesn't mean anything to me. As a disciplinary matter, it is too late.
There is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter.
If I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an' work, an' no trouble.
Just set one day's work in front of the last day's work. That's the way it comes out. And that's the only way it does.
There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good.
When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.
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.
Man has become our greatest hazard, and our only hope.
If you are in love-that's a good thing-that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone.