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
We have to make a mark, even if it's only a scribble.
The great concepts of oneness and of majestic order seem always to be born in the desert.
I find it valid to understand man as an animal before I am prepared to know him as a man.
The techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost.
One can't be happy as I have been for very long. There's a law against it. I have worked hard and enjoyed my work and it is the punishment of man to hate his work. Sooner or later I will have work that I hate.
It must be a hard thing to kill a man you don't know and don't hate.
No single organism could be understood without observing and comprehending the entire colony.
For many years we have suckled on fear and fear alone, and there is no good product of fear.
This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.
I seen too many guys with land in their head. They never get none under their hand.
Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody - to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.
What good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world - temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics.
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.
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.