Top 500 John Steinbeck Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “A farmer cannot think too much evil of a good farmer.”

— John Steinbeck

252. “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

253. “We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.”

— John Steinbeck

254. “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

255. “I climb fences when i got fences to climb.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

257. “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

258. “I hope I’m not so small-souled as to take satisfaction in being missed.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

260. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

262. “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

263. “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

264. “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

265. “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

266. “We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

— John Steinbeck

267. “Cathy spoke very quietly. “Adam, I didn’t want to come here. I am not going to stay here. As soon as I can I will go away.”

— John Steinbeck

268. “We have made our mark on the world, but we have really done nothing that the trees and creeping plants, ice and erosion, cannot remove in a fairly short time.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

271. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

273. “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

274. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

278. “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

279. “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

280. “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

281. “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

Featured in: Book Quotes

282. “Some people think it’s an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

Featured in: Book Quotes

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

— John Steinbeck

285. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

287. “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

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

— John Steinbeck

289. “They say a good soldier fights a battle, never a war. That’s for civilians.”

— John Steinbeck

290. “When a man is finally boxed and he has no choice, he begins to decorate his box. So Hazel, condemned to the presidency, since he could not escape it, began to ornament it. A man can climb high on the steps of responsibility.”

— John Steinbeck

291. “Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too. – Tom Joad.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

293. “You can’t slice up morals.”

— John Steinbeck

294. “Tom’s cowardice was as huge as his courage, as it must be in great men. His violence balanced his tenderness, and himself was a pitted battlefield of his own forces.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

296. “A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.”

— John Steinbeck

297. “This is the greatest mystery of the human mind – the inductive leap. Everything falls into place, irrelevancies relate, dissonance becomes harmony, and nonsense wears a crown of meaning. But the clarifying leap springs from the rich soil of confusion, and the leaper is not unfamiliar with pain.”

— John Steinbeck

298. “And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child’s world in never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”

— John Steinbeck

299. “The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt – and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is.”

— John Steinbeck

300. “If you want to destroy a nation, give it too much – make it greedy, miserable and sick.”

— John Steinbeck