Quotes by John Steinbeck

"These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new."

"So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda."

"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."

"I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts."

"Time is the only critic without ambition."

"Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it."

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

"In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable."

"I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession."

"One can find so many pains when the rain is falling."

"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."

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

"You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway."

"A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us."

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

"Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners."

"Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time."

"Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased."

"A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ."

"A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it."