Top 500 John Steinbeck Quotes (2023 Update)
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201. “Saints can spring from any soil.”

— John Steinbeck

202. “Once Charley fell in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully.”

— John Steinbeck

203. “The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if in no other way, we can see the wild and reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index.”

— John Steinbeck

204. “Father and son are natural enemies and each is happier and more secure in keeping it that way.”

— John Steinbeck

205. “This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.”

— John Steinbeck

206. “The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost.”

— John Steinbeck

207. “Men seem to be born with a debt they can never pay no matter how hard they try. It piles up ahead of them. Man owes something to man. If he ignores the debt it poisons him, and if he tries to make payments the debt only increases, and the quality of his gift is the measure of the man.”

— John Steinbeck

208. “The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.”

— John Steinbeck

209. “I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion.”

— John Steinbeck

210. “I guess I’m trying to say, Grab anything that goes by. It may not come around again.”

— John Steinbeck

211. “A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed. Remember this thing. I have known boys forty years old because there was no need for a man:.”

— John Steinbeck

212. “Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.”

— John Steinbeck

213. “A writer lives in awe of words, for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.”

— John Steinbeck

214. “He never fell, never slipped back, never flew.”

— John Steinbeck

215. “Doc still loved true things but he knew that it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.”

— John Steinbeck

216. “So much there is to see, but our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world.”

— John Steinbeck

217. “Money is not nice. Money got no friends but more money.”

— John Steinbeck

218. “Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don’t believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it.”

— John Steinbeck

219. “My wants are simple. I have no desire to latch onto a monster symbol of fate and power and prove my manhood in titanic piscine war. But sometimes I do like a couple of cooperative fish of frying size.”

— John Steinbeck

220. “Give me a used Bible and I will, I think, be able to tell you about a man by the places that are edged with the dirt of seeking fingers.”

— John Steinbeck

221. “And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.”

— John Steinbeck

222. “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.”

— John Steinbeck

223. “I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments.”

— John Steinbeck

224. “Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper.”

— John Steinbeck

225. “The difficulty of course is that I like women. It is only wives I am in trouble with.”

— John Steinbeck

226. “With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us. We don’t have to sit in no bar room blowin’ in our jack jus’ because we got no place else to go. If them other guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But not us.”

— John Steinbeck

227. “In business and in politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind-but he must get there first.”

— John Steinbeck

228. “I need a dog pretty badly. I dreamed of dogs last night. They sat in a circle and looked at me and I wanted all of them.”

— John Steinbeck

229. “How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise – the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream – be set down alive?”

— John Steinbeck

230. “His whispered word seemed to hang in the air: “Timshel!” His eyes closed and he slept.”

— John Steinbeck

231. “If we could learn to like ourselves, even a little, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.”

— John Steinbeck

232. “Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.”

— John Steinbeck

233. “The curious hocus-pocus of criticism I can’t take seriously. It consists in squirreling up some odd phrases and then waiting for a book to come running by.”

— John Steinbeck

234. “That is a great mystery,” said Doctor Winter. “That is a mystery that has disturbed rulers all over the world – how the people know. It disturbs the invaders now, I am told, how news runs through censorships, how the truth of things fights free of control. It is a great mystery.”

— John Steinbeck

235. “And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living.”

— John Steinbeck

236. “Thou mayest rule over sin.”

— John Steinbeck

237. “One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter Beware. You will never get out of this world alive.”

— John Steinbeck

238. “Luck or tragedy, some people get runs. Then of course there are those who divide it even, good and bad, but we never hear of them. Such a life doesn’t demand attention. Only the people who get the good or bad runs.”

— John Steinbeck

239. “The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.”

— John Steinbeck

240. “Nobody changes. Nobody gets hurt.”

— John Steinbeck

241. “Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.”

— John Steinbeck

242. “A good writer always works at the impossible.”

— John Steinbeck

243. “When the fair gold morning of April stirred Mary Hawley awake, she turned over to her husband and saw him, little fingers pulling a frog mouth at her.”

— John Steinbeck

244. “Stories have haunted us and followed us from our beginning,” Samuel said. “We carry them along with us like invisible tails – the story of original sin and the story of Cain and Abel. And I don’t understand either of them. I don’t understand them at all but I feel them.”

— John Steinbeck

245. “But you can’t start. Only a baby can start. You and me – why, we’re all that’s been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that’s us. This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can’t start again.”

— John Steinbeck

246. “Things that happen are of no importance. But from everything that happens, there is a lesson to be learned.”

— John Steinbeck

247. “The power of an attitude is amazing.”

— John Steinbeck

248. “You can’t slice up morals.”

— John Steinbeck

249. “Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page a day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.”

— John Steinbeck

250. “With all our horrors and faults, somewhere in us there is a shining.”

— John Steinbeck