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John Steinbeck

United States writer noted for his novels about agricultural workers (1902-1968)

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Texas is not a state -- it's a state of mind.

– John Steinbeck

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It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

– John Steinbeck

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A book is like a man -- clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

– John Steinbeck

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A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of lifespan, in effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage.

– John Steinbeck

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And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in all the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

– John Steinbeck

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Even while I protest the assembly-line production of our food, our songs, our language, and eventually our souls, I know that it was a rare home that baked good bread in the old days. Mother's cooking was with rare exceptions poor, that good unpasteurized milk touched only by flies and bits of manure crawled with bacteria, the healthy old-time life was riddled with aches, sudden death from unknown causes, and that sweet local speech I mourn was the child of illiteracy and ignorance. It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better.

– John Steinbeck

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How can we live without our lives? How will we know its us without our past?

– John Steinbeck

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I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.

– John Steinbeck

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I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

– John Steinbeck

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I know this--a man got to do what he got to do.

– John Steinbeck

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I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.”

– John Steinbeck

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

– John Steinbeck

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If you're in trouble, or hurt or need -- go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help -- the only ones.

– John Steinbeck

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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.

– John Steinbeck

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It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thoughts or action we should remember our dying and try so to live, that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

– John Steinbeck

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Lord, how the day passes! It is like a life, so quickly when we don't watch it, and so slowly if we do.

– John Steinbeck

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Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

– John Steinbeck

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No one wants advice -- only corroboration.

– John Steinbeck

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Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

– John Steinbeck

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

– John Steinbeck

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The fields were fruitful and starving men moved on the roads. The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up rachitic.

– John Steinbeck

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The new American finds his challenge and his love in the traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the town lets wither a time and die.

– John Steinbeck

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The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

– John Steinbeck

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Writers are a little below the clowns and a little above the trained seals.

– John Steinbeck

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