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
...to find where you are going, you must know where you are.
When you know a friend is there you do not go to see him. Then he's gone and you blast your conscience to shreds that you did not see him.
It is possible, even probable, to be told a truth about a place, to accept it, to know it and at the same time not to know anything about it.
I know this... a man got to do what he got to do.
Don't make everyone know about your sadness.
We know what we got, and we don't care whether you know it or not.
How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?
I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.
Just as the Carthaginians hired mercenaries to do their fighting for them, we Americans bring in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat.
It is the nature of a man as he grows older- to protest against change, particularly changes for the better
You give me much good counsel. I am tired of it.
Fear the day when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, distinctive in the universe.
American cities are like badger holes ringed with trash
Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theatre, it doesn't exist. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person, a real person you know, or an imagined person -- and write to that one.