Top 500 John Steinbeck Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.”

— John Steinbeck

202. “The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line.”

— John Steinbeck

203. “I’ve always seen you, angel. From the moment you found me, I’ve seen nothing but you.”

— John Steinbeck

204. “The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.”

— John Steinbeck

205. “Oh, the strawberries don’t taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!”

— John Steinbeck

206. “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

207. “How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare him – he has known a fear beyond every other.”

— John Steinbeck

208. “The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.”

— John Steinbeck

209. “I have written a great many stories and I still don’t know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.”

— John Steinbeck

210. “Hate cannot live alone. It must have love as a trigger, a goad, or a stimulant.”

— John Steinbeck

211. “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

212. “Saints can spring from any soil.”

— John Steinbeck

213. “Niagara Falls is very nice. I’m very glad I saw it, because from now on if I am asked whether I have seen Niagara Falls I can say yes, and be telling the truth for once.”

— John Steinbeck

214. “Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man.”

— John Steinbeck

215. “We have to make a mark, even if it’s only a scribble.”

— John Steinbeck

216. “Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.”

— John Steinbeck

217. “When Kino had finished, Juana came back to the fire and ate her breakfast. They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway. Kino sighed with satisfaction – and that was conversation.”

— John Steinbeck

218. “And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.”

— John Steinbeck

219. “But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There’s no godliness there.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

221. “The new migrants from the dust bowl are here to stay. They are the vest American stock, intelligent, resourceful; and, if given a chance, socially responsible. To attempt to force them into a peonage of starvation and intimidated despair will be unsuccessful. They can be citizens of the highest type, or they can be an army driven by suffering to take what they need. On their future treatment will depend the course they will be force to take.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

223. “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

224. “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

225. “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

226. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

228. “It is a time of quiet joy, the sunny morning. When the glittery dew is on the mallow weeds, each leaf holds a jewel which is beautiful if not valuable. This is no time for hurry or for bustle. Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.”

— John Steinbeck

229. “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

230. “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

231. “To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and to a monster the norm is monstrous.”

— John Steinbeck

232. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

234. “Don’t make everyone know about your sadness.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

236. “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

237. “And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist-or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.”

— John Steinbeck

238. “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

239. “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

240. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

245. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

247. “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

248. “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

249. “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

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

— John Steinbeck