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

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

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.
John Steinbeck

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

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.
John Steinbeck

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.
John Steinbeck

No one wants advice - only corroboration.
John Steinbeck

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

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

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.
John Steinbeck

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.
John Steinbeck

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
John Steinbeck

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

The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.
John Steinbeck

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

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

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.
John Steinbeck

Time is the only critic without ambition.
John Steinbeck

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.
John Steinbeck

We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.
John Steinbeck